by David Archer
TWENTY-ONE
“Are you okay?” Dex asked her afterward.
She giggled, and it dawned on her that it was the first time she had giggled in a long time. “Oh, geez, I’m more than okay. Maybe I had just forgotten how great that could be, but you are awesome.”
“You’re pretty damned awesome yourself,” Dex said, and then he kissed her again. “I just want to be sure you’re okay with it.”
“I’m okay,” she said. “Really.” She was lying on her left side, most of “Freda” concealed by the deep, fluffy pillow, and watching his face in the surprisingly bright glow of the clock. “How about you?”
“Me? Cassie, I’m great.” He rolled onto his right side so that they were face-to-face. “Look, I know you’re not looking for a boyfriend or anything, and you’ll probably never let this happen again, but let me tell you right now that this night is going to rank in the top ten—no, the top three—in the memories I plan to relive over and over and over, all the way up until I either die or get Alzheimer’s and can’t remember anymore.”
“Oh, God, you’re such an ass,” she said, but she was still giggling. “Are you sure it wasn’t just a pity fling? Give the scarred, ugly girl something nice to remember in her own old age?”
“Now, that’s funny,” Dex shot back. “I was about to ask you the same thing. Were you just taking pity on me, giving me a thrill because most girls won’t even give me the time of day?”
“Oh, right! Somehow I have trouble imagining you not being able to get a girl. Girls tend to go for cocky guys, and you’re about as cocky as they get.”
“Really? Where do I find those girls? Because, trust me, they ain’t hanging around anywhere I go.” He pulled her close and kissed her, then looked into her eye again. “Okay, I get chances,” he said. “The problem is that I’m picky. I learned the hard way that I’m not husband material, so any girl who’s got her sights on a wedding ring needs to keep looking.”
“Well, I’m definitely not looking for one of those,” Cassie said. “And if you’re trying to imply that you’re good boyfriend material, I’ve got to be honest and say I’m not looking for one of those, either.”
“Nope, I’m a lousy boyfriend. I tend to forget birthdays, I never fail to alienate a girl’s parents, and it doesn’t bother me a bit to go days without even speaking, so most girls get tired of me in a hurry.”
Cassie was just staring at him, so he adjusted his head to look more deeply into her eye. “What?”
“You said you didn’t expect this to happen again,” she said slowly. “Does that mean you wouldn’t want it to? I mean, that’s okay if you wouldn’t want to do this again, but—I guess I’m trying to say that, if we each had a friend with benefits, that might not be too bad, once in a while?”
Dex laughed delightedly. “I was trying to figure out how to say that’s where I fit in the best,” he said. “As a friend with benefits, I’m dead on the money. I’ll always come running if you call, and it doesn’t have to be just for this. If you just need to vent, I’ll be ready to listen, and if you need a shoulder to cry on and nothing else, I’m good with that, too. But, if you need the benefits…”
“Shut up, Dex.”
Somehow, probably during the second benefit, they had ended up on the opposite sides of the bed. Cassie was awakened by the alarm clock when it went off and realized that she was cuddled up to Dex. She was lying with her head on his chest, and his left arm was wrapped around her. His hand was gently caressing the scars on her arm, and she slowly rolled her head up to look at his face.
“Morning, sunshine,” he said. “I wasn’t sure what time you had to go to work, so I set the alarm for five thirty. I don’t have to be in until nine, so unless you’re in a hurry and need to go by home, we could go get some breakfast and then pick up your car.”
Cassie looked closely at him, and that was when he reached over to turn on the bedside lamp. She quickly covered her eyes with her hand, realized that her eye patch had come off sometime during the night, then snatched at the covers and pulled them up over herself. “Turn that off,” she demanded, and he did so. “Sorry, but I can’t stand the thought of you seeing me naked in the light. Nobody should have to see anything like that. I can barely stand it myself.”
“That’s only because you remember what you used to look like,” he said. “I don’t. What you look like now is perfectly okay with me.”
“Well, it’s not okay with me.” She threw off the covers in the darkness and got hurriedly out of the bed, then found her clothes where they had fallen on the floor. She dressed hurriedly, conscious that that blasted alarm clock was putting out enough light to let him see how badly her leg and left buttock were scarred.
The late-night conversation came back to her, and she suddenly cursed herself. How could she have let this happen? Friends with benefits? Any girl burned as badly as she was didn’t have such things, and she had been a fool to even discuss that possibility with him. He was a man, and he had taken advantage of her vulnerability for whatever reasons of his own. Maybe he had some kind of fetish for damaged goods, got a kick out of conquering scarred and traumatized women.
“Cassie,” Dex said as she buttoned her blouse, but she refused to look at him.
“What?” She could hear the bitterness in her voice, but she didn’t care. She had been stupid, and she deserved whatever pain this ended up bringing to her.
“Turn around,” he said. “Please.”
She turned slowly, keeping her eye aimed down toward the floor. If this was the part where he confessed that he had just been desperate to get laid, she didn’t want to see his face while he said it.
Suddenly, he turned on the light, and the surprise made her look up. She saw him clearly, standing there naked, and sudden realization dawned on her.
From the middle of his chest down, Dex was scarred just as she was, but it wasn’t just on one side. As she stared, he turned completely around and she saw that the burns had covered almost every part of him below his sternum.
“How…” she managed to ask.
“It happened when I was a kid,” he said. “I was fifteen, and I had just stolen a car when a cop spotted me. He put on his lights and I took off, but I wasn’t really that good a driver at the time. I lost control around a corner and the car flipped several times. It landed on its roof with me sticking almost half out, but the gas tank had ruptured. We never did figure out what ignited it, but I was lying in a puddle of it inside the roof of the car. When it lit up, I came crawling out in a hurry, but I was already on fire. The cop who was chasing me managed to put it out with a fire extinguisher, but as you can see the damage was already done.”
“Why didn’t you tell me? When you were telling me about your past, why didn’t you mention this then?”
“Because you would’ve thought I was trying to be sympathetic,” he said. “I never actually expected to tell you at all, but I figure you’re standing there getting dressed and cussing yourself because this happened, am I right? I thought it might help if you knew the truth.”
Cassie looked him over, and a hundred thoughts raced through her mind. She started to ask a dozen questions but bit them off before they could escape her mouth. Finally, she looked back up at his face. “Your girlfriend, Sabrina. Did she know?”
“I had told her, but she’d never seen me this way. Like I said, we never even got to the point of dating. Hell, for all I know, that might’ve been why she pushed me away, but that still doesn’t explain why she would just disappear the way she did.”
She looked his body up and down once more, then focused on his face again. “What you said last night, about us just being friends with benefits. Were you serious? Or was that just an easy way to let me down if I tried to get too close?”
“Oh, I was dead serious,” he said with a grin. “Was there a little part of me that thought maybe you wouldn’t find me completely disgusting, like some girls do? Sure, I’m human, after all. But mostly, I just need a
friend, not a lover. And I think you are in the same boat.”
“Get dressed,” Cassie said. “I think you offered to take me out for breakfast, and I’m about starving.”
“Of course you are,” Dex replied as he opened the dresser drawer and pulled out a pair of boxers. “Burn victims have a tendency to burn calories faster. We lose a lot of body fat, so we have to eat more to fuel the fires inside.”
“Oh, shut up. You’re starting to sound like one of my doctors.”
He dressed quickly and drove her to a café not far from his house, one that offered a good selection for breakfast. Cassie was delighted to see biscuits and gravy on the menu and ordered a plate of them, and another of eggs and bacon.
When they were finished, Dex drove her to the bar to pick up her Kia and handed her the file he’d compiled on Sabrina. She took it without a word and started to get out, but then turned back and leaned over toward him. He didn’t flinch, so she kissed him and then turned away.
“Hey,” he said. “What was that for?”
“For good luck,” Cassie said. “I suspect I’m gonna need it.”
She got into her car and waved as he drove away, then flipped open the file. Sabrina Moss, according to the information it contained, was a typical American girl. She had grown up in Tulsa and then gone to college there, as well, getting a liberal arts degree. She had worked for the last year before she disappeared as an associate editor at a local magazine. She had no criminal record, and other than the fact that she was missing, there was no mystery about her life.
Raymond Francis, on the other hand, was almost a polar opposite. Originally from Orlando, he had moved to Tulsa with his mother when he was twelve and had spent most of his teens in and out of juvenile institutions. His most common offense was purse snatching, although he had also been arrested twice for hitting his mother. He had always managed to avoid any lengthy sentences, but there didn’t seem to be anyone who had good things to say about him. His mother had died about six months before he disappeared, and Cassie considered the possibility that this was what triggered his sudden insistence on a relationship with Sabrina.
Both Sabrina and Raymond had stopped showing up for work around the same time. The police had determined that the two of them had been speaking on the telephone a lot, but always in very short conversations. When questioned, however, all of Sabrina’s friends claimed that she wanted nothing to do with him. Neither of their phones had been used since they had disappeared, nor had any of their credit cards. Each of them had left a moderate amount of money in a bank account, and neither had ever tried to draw any out.
Raymond’s friends, on the other hand, reported that he had been boasting about how well their relationship was going. According to what he had told them, they were even talking about getting married. All of them, however, were surprised when Raymond vanished. He had been working at a construction company and had just been promoted to foreman, a position he had coveted for quite some time.
The more Cassie read, the more certain she became that Sabrina was probably dead. To her, it was unbelievable that the police had not been able to read between the lines. Raymond was a stalker, and apparently the type who could delude himself into believing the object of his attention wanted a permanent, closer relationship. From what she had read in her studies, this type of stalker often reacted with murderous rage when confronted with reality. There was no doubt in Cassie’s mind that he had gone to Sabrina and made some kind of demand that she recognize his affections, and that he most likely killed her in a rage when she tried to explain that she did not love him.
That meant that finding Raymond was the key to solving the mystery of what happened to Sabrina, and Cassie was determined to solve it. Even if the girl was dead, her family—and Dex—needed some kind of closure.
She glanced at the clock on her dash and saw that it was almost eight, then took out her phone and called Alicia. She didn’t expect the detective to be in yet and only planned to leave a message.
To her surprise, the call was answered. “Detective Perkins,” Alicia said.
“Hey, it’s Cassie. Have you got a few minutes?”
Alicia sighed. “Sure. What have you got? And I hope it’s not another one like yesterday.”
“Not a bit,” Cassie said. “I’ve got something that may be way out of your ballpark, but you’re the only cop I know around here. Can I come by your office?”
“Sure, if you want. I can’t swear I won’t get called away in the middle of things, though.”
“That’s okay. I’ll be there in about fifteen minutes.”
She started the Kia and pulled out of the parking lot, then headed downtown to where Alicia’s office was stuffed into a spare city building. The police department had outgrown its headquarters years before, but the new buildings didn’t have enough room for small divisions like domestic violence, so it was housed in what used to be part of the water department.
Cassie arrived with two minutes to spare and was ushered into Alicia’s office a moment later. It was actually the first time the two of them had ever met, but Alicia had been warned about Cassie’s appearance and managed not to stare for more than a couple of seconds.
“Hey,” she said as Cassie extended a hand, “it’s good to finally meet you.”
“Ditto,” Cassie said as they shook. “And I really appreciate you giving me some time. I’ve been asked to look into a disappearance, and I don’t really know where to start.”
Alicia’s eyes narrowed. “Another child?” she asked, but Cassie shook her head.
“No,” she said. “It’s an adult, but I think she may be a murder victim.”
TWENTY-TWO
Alicia shook her head. “Wait a minute,” she said. “Is this one of your Outreach cases?”
“No,” Cassie said. “Remember the guy who gave me the lead on Roger McCoy? Dex Tate?”
“Oh, so it’s Dex, now. Yesterday you were calling him Dexter, so I’m guessing you got the dinner and it went well?”
Cassie felt half of her face turning red. “Actually, it did,” she said. “The thing is, what he wanted to talk to me about was finding this girl he used to know. She disappeared under suspicious circumstances, and I’ve looked over the file he has put together on it. He’s even hired private investigators, but they can find no trace of her, anywhere. She disappeared at the same time as one of her ex-boyfriends, a guy who was apparently stalking her. She didn’t tell anyone she was leaving, not even her mother. Nobody has heard from her since then, and it’s been almost two years.”
“So, you’re thinking the stalker may have killed her? If he’s also vanished, that’s a distinct possibility.”
“He not only vanished, but it was right after he got a promotion he had been trying for. All his friends thought he and this girl were about to be married or something, but her friends say she couldn’t stand him. I was hoping you might be able to give me some suggestions on where to start.”
“Is that the file?” Alicia asked, pointing at the folder Cassie was clutching. Cassie handed it over without a word and sat quietly while Alicia flipped through it.
“Hmmm,” Alicia said after a moment. “Let me try something. We’ve had a few new features added to our system in the last year or so.” She turned to her computer and started tapping on the keyboard. “Okay, first I’m running Sabrina through the system, to see if anything comes up. I’ve got her driver’s license, Social Security number, all the relevant identifying items. Now, let’s turn on the high-powered stuff. I’ve isolated her photo, and I’m running it through a facial recognition database from NCIC, looking for any sightings in the last couple of years. Let’s see if we get a hit.”
She turned the monitor so that Cassie could see it as well, as the computer compared Sabrina’s photo to thousands of others every second. The software ran for almost four minutes and then suddenly came to a halt. It displayed a lot of information about Sabrina, but there was nothing new from the last two years.
“Well, that didn’t help. I was hoping maybe she got a new driver’s license or some other kind of ID that might’ve ended up in the database. The trouble is that there’s probably hundreds or thousands of pictures of her from before, so finding anything new is going to be a problem. Same thing is likely if we try him; we’ll find his Facebook profile, but we already know it’s been dead for two years.”
“Okay,” Cassie said. “So where do I go from here? I don’t expect you to do this for me, but I figured maybe you could give me some pointers.”
Alicia sat back and looked at her for a moment. “Are you getting paid for this?”
Cassie shook her head. “No,” she said. “Long story, but I don’t need money. He offered to pay me, but I told him to donate it to a charity or something.”
“The reason I asked is because you have to have a license in Oklahoma to be a private investigator for hire. A private citizen, on the other hand, who is not being paid can investigate anything she damn well wants to. That being said, I would suggest you start by speaking to all of her friends. Find out if any of them have heard anything from her since she disappeared.” She waved a dismissive hand at the file lying on her desk. “I don’t know the PIs who worked on this case for your guy, but it looks like they only spoke to a handful of people. That’s not enough. One thing I know about people is that they have a hard time walking away from the past completely. They might stop talking to family, but there’s always one or two friends they get in touch with sooner or later. And of course, this applies to Raymond Francis, as well. If these two people are still alive, I’d bet my house that somebody has heard from them.”
Cassie nodded. “I think you’re right,” she said. “That’s one of the problems we run into with the abuse shelters, the fact that the women always want to contact somebody they knew. That’s unfortunately how several men found out where their wives were hiding, and that didn’t always end well.” She reached out and picked up the file. “Thanks, Alicia. At least you’ve given me some ideas to start with.”