"Did Morgan suspend her?" Morgan Day was the school principal. A decent guy, if a little soft on discipline.
She made a rude noise. "He tried, but when we called Trinity's mother to tell her about the incident, she demanded a meeting after school. Trinity lied, over and over, and her mother believed her. She refused to listen to the teacher who saw the incident, refused to believe her precious little angel would ever do something so horrible. She refused to accept the suspension. She even hinted we were targeting Trinity because of her color."
The race card, played more often than a one-eyed Jack in a euchre game. "What'd Morgan end up doing?"
"What he always does—he backed down. At least he warned them that another incident would be taken seriously, up to and including expulsion. Trinity's mom smiled and said we'd better do a better job watching the other students."
"It's women like her that keep me in business."
Toni grimaced. "I don't know what's up with kids today. They have this outrageous sense of entitlement. What'll happen when they become adults? The real world will mow them down until there's nothing left but bloody stumps for ankles."
"I've got a clue for you—they're going to be the real world. That's the scariest part." I nuzzled her cheek. "Mmm, you smell good."
She caressed my face. "It's the soap I bought in Emersville."
"You liked it?"
"A lot. Loved the bath. Best I've had in a while."
I took in her aroma. "Did you ever place the scent?"
"Some sort of floral, but at the same time not." She gave me a sexy grin. "It made me feel tingly."
I paused, thinking of Doug and how he had felt tingly after his incident with Thumbkin. The coincidence unnerved me, and my stomach did an unpleasant little flip into by bowels.
I took a steadying breath. Stupid coincidence: that’s what it was. I pushed the memory aside and took Toni’s hand. "I brought dinner. Let's eat while it's still hot."
"I'm not hungry. At least, not for food." She turned back the covers. She wore one of my t-shirts and nothing else. "Plenty of room in here, mister."
"You hate cold Chinese."
"Not as much as I'd love some hot Brad." She slipped out of her shirt. I was more of a leg man, but the sight of her full breasts with their hard, pink nipples sent a shiver through me. I cupped her face in my hands and stared into her eyes. They were beautiful. Soulful and eternal. I loved them. I loved her.
We kissed. There was no tentativeness, no hesitancy, just urgency and passion.
Her fingers worked at the buttons of my shirt, the buckle of my belt. Soon I was naked and in bed. Her hands stayed busy. They pinched my nipples, slid down my stomach, found my excitement. My hardness. She gently stroked me, moaning into my mouth, her tongue exploring.
My skin tingled where she touched me. It added a sense of intoxication to my excitement, and I felt myself grow harder. Harder than I've ever been. Hard enough to explode.
"Jesus, Brad. I need you inside me."
I rolled on top of her, my lips traveling to the curve of her neck. I kissed her again and again as I entered her. She rocked her hips. I responded by thrusting, driving into her, back and forth, back and forth. I felt her clamp down on me. The tingling sensation swelled, driving me on.
"Whatever you're doing," I said. "Keep doing it."
"Oh, baby. You feel so good."
I pounded harder. Toni, normally a passive partner, responded by bucking against me, riding my length. We kept going, meeting thrust for thrust, until she shuddered in one of the most intense orgasms I'd seen her have.
Her skin glowing, she grinned at me. "Okay, lover. Your turn."
Gripping my shoulders, she rolled me over in one smooth motion. I stayed buried in her the whole time.
It was so fucking hot.
She sat up. Her hair was mussed, her skin damp with excitement, her eyes shining with passion. In the glow of the hallway light, she looked like a goddess.
She began to grind her hips. As she rode me, her hands caressed her breasts, her fingers tweaked her already taut nipples.
"You like this?" She gripped my cock with the walls of her vagina.
I grunted. It was all I could manage. Words would not have done the experience justice.
"How about this?" Grinning impishly, she reached back and gently massaged by testicles. "You like this too?"
That did it. I felt a tightness in my groin, a churning that signaled my impending eruption. I swelled to the point where it was almost painful.
"Oh, baby." Toni clamped down again. Her skillful fingers urged me on. "Oh, baby. Give it to me."
My hands shot to her hips, holding her down as I reached my climax and shot ribbon after ribbon of white into her. The spasms continued until I thought I would pass out. The musky-sweet scent of our love filled the room.
I pulled Toni into a hug. With her knees bent, the embrace felt a little awkward, but I wanted to experience the warmth of her skin on mine, her breath on my cheek. She buried her face into my neck.
"I love you," I whispered.
"Love you right back," she said. "That was amazing. I don't think I've experienced anything like it before."
"You were amazing. The things you did to me."
"We were both amazing." She giggled. "My god, you've never felt that big before. I thought you were going to split me in two."
"I almost passed out at the end."
"My stud." Toni swiveled her hips. "Oh, wow. Look at you, lover boy. Still hard as a rock."
She was right. My excitement hadn't subsided. I remained buried inside her.
She twitched her muscles and I groaned. We hadn't had a back-to-backer in years.
"Let's see how far we can take this," Toni said, and began working her magic on me.
Needless to say, I was enthralled.
* * *
After a third round of lovemaking, Toni curled into a ball and fell asleep.
Stunned at what had transpired, I couldn't sleep. What I needed was a cigarette. Since I didn't smoke, I settled for a beer.
I retreated to the kitchen, wearing the t-shirt Toni had borrowed and my boxers, and ate reheated Chinese with chopsticks.
I loved my wife, but we had been married more than ten years. Time and familiarity had blunted our passions. Twofers were a thing of the past, and I'd never gotten it up three times in rapid succession, even as a youth.
As wonderful as we had felt, as amazing as our lovemaking had been, it had felt unnatural, almost forced. Or maybe induced would be a better word.
The thought made me pause. Certain drugs effected sexuality. Little blue pills for erectile dysfunction, the over-the-counter infomercial crap bought by gullible men who wanted to become love stallions—they might work on the mechanics of sex, but they did nothing for passion. Older compounds like cabergoline and bromocriptine could induce a sense of eroticism, and they were reputed to cause multiple orgasms in men and women, but they were difficult to acquire, let alone find a way for us to ingest them.
Then there was the tingling sensation. It had followed Toni's touches; where her body came into contact with mine, my skin almost burned with excitement. Maybe she passed something on to me, inadvertently drugging us both into an act of unrestrained love.
I thought back to what Toni had done during her day: school, meeting, bath.
Soap.
My pulse quickened. It had to be the soap. Annabelle St. Crux had given it to Toni during our visit to Emersville, saying she wanted to help us.
Could the soap contain a chemical, one passed on by touch, one that could enhance our arousal? A kind of transdermal roofie?
And soap wasn't the only thing we’d procured in Emersville.
My eyes cut to the counter.
Thumbkin, with her big black-button eyes fixed on me.
Thumbkin, with her scorched dress, as if she had withstood a massive electrical charge, one that had stunned me and rendered Doug Belle incapacitated.
I g
rabbed the doll and laid her on the table. A ceiling light shone from above, illuminating the surface. I felt like a doctor about to perform surgery in an operating theater; or worse, a medical examiner about to conduct an autopsy on a murdered child. I took a pull from my beer and wiped my mouth with my hand.
Three long scorch marks marred Thumbkin's apron. A jagged burn like a scar skittered along her moon face, beneath her left eye and across the tip of her triangular nose. It gave the doll a menacing look, as if she had emerged from a barroom brawl, bruised and battered and looking to kick more ass.
I lifted the apron. The blue cotton dress beneath had burned through in spots, the charred holes looking like blisters in an ocean. Hints of smoke scratched at my sinuses, drawing tears from my eyes. The acridity seemed too intense, given the amount of time that had passed; I shouldn't have been able to smell anything.
I flipped the doll over. More holes. I stuck my finger into one. The stuffing felt soft, puffy. Everything you would expect. I pushed my finger in further and found more batting. Certainly nothing that would cause a spontaneous combustion. It seemed, in all respects, a stuffed doll.
Then I felt a sharp, slicing sensation and jerked my finger out. Blood covered the tip. I wiped it away with a napkin. There was a small incision across the pad of my index finger.
Something inside the doll had cut me.
I grabbed a pair of scissors and carefully cut away part of the dress, exposing wads of gray cotton shot through with blue and red threads, parts of which were burned away. I gently pulled the batting apart.
That's when I found it, buried in the center of the doll's chest like a heart: a metal lattice-work construct, about an inch long and shaped like an egg, with holes like honeycombs cut into the surface and a small, jagged hole near the middle.
I pushed it around with a chopstick. Whatever it was, it looked delicate. At first I thought it might have been constructed of wire filaments, the metal was so thin. On closer examination, I discovered there were no windings at the intersections, and the metal was flat instead of rounded. Not wire, then: the egg had been fashioned from a single piece of metal.
I picked it up. It hardly weighed anything. The surface was shiny, like silver or aluminum. Where the lattice had broken, the metal ends stuck up, needle-like. I must have cut my finger on one of those edges.
Holding it between my fingers, I squeezed. Not hard, but enough to test its strength.
The egg held its shape.
I squeezed harder. The egg didn't warp or bend or twist. Given the metal's slenderness, I should have been able to flatten it.
Setting it on the table, I hammered at it with the blunt end of a chopstick.
Nothing.
We owned a steel meat tenderizer. I got it out and hammered at the egg a couple times.
It didn't even scratch the metal.
A worm of fear, cold and wet, slithered up my spine.
I was going to need help on this one.
Chapter Nine
"What do you think it is?" Frank said, holding the tiny lattice-work egg up to his eye.
It was the next day. After rescheduling my morning appointments, I called Frank asking for help. We met in his office at the police station. Manila file folders covered his desk. Despite the transition to computers, Frank couldn't break with tradition. Each of his cases had to be printed out: reports from officers or the M.E., evidence chains, photos of the crime scene, transcripts from interrogations. He then assembled everything related to the case and stuffed into a folder. Talk about old school.
"Not sure," I said. "I found it inside a doll I bought. A patient was playing with her when she short-circuited. Knocked the poor kid out cold."
Frank glanced at me. "Her?"
"I meant the doll, Thumbkin."
"You gave it a name?"
"It's a matter of convenience."
"It's fucking weird." He returned his attention to the egg. "Metal looks thin. You said you tried hammering it?"
"Couldn't raise a scratch."
Frank set the egg on his desk. "What was the kid doing when it happened?"
"He was angry. His dad died recently. He was twisting the doll as he talked about it."
"Hard enough to break this thing?"
"You mean, harder than hammering it with a meat tenderizer?"
The lines on his forehead deepened. "Yet it broke while surrounded by soft cotton."
"If it made sense, I wouldn't be here."
The sounds of a busy police station filtered through the closed door. Footsteps, terse conversations, the muted squawk of a police band radio. Frank's office held the dry paper scent you would more commonly associate with in a library.
"What about having the metal analyzed?" he asked.
"I suppose Steve could find someone to do it." Steve was my brother, the engineering professor over at Ann Arbor. He probably knew people who tested metals. "Except I'm not sure I want him involved."
"You two have a falling out?"
"No, nothing like that."
Frank waited. I was holding back, and he knew it.
I shifted uncomfortably. "You have coffee in this place?"
"You're stalling."
"A cup of coffee. Please?"
Grunting, Frank left the office. He returned with two Styrofoam cups and set one in front of me.
"Okay, Paco, you got your fix. Now fess up. Why don't you want your genius brother involved?"
"Two reasons. First, whoever did the testing would have to use University equipment, which means requisitioning time. I'm not sure he could swing it for work outside of his research."
"Why don't you let him worry about that?"
"Sure. He says no, it's no. But I know him. He'd insist on helping. He'd get the tests run."
"Which leads to your second concern."
"I’m guessing the tests would require some use of energy."
Frank sat up straighter. "That worries you?"
"A little," I said, and sipped my coffee.
When I didn't continue, Frank threw me a look that would have broken the resolve of a far stronger man. "Don't jerk me around, Paco. I deserve better than that from you."
He was right. I should be more up front with him, but we were wandering into dangerous territory filled with unknown threats. He had a wife and family, with a baby on the way. I owed my caution to them as much as to him.
Without him, though, I wouldn't get far in solving the puzzle of the egg.
Like it or not, he was the detective in this duo.
I pointed to the egg. "Do you see a battery in that thing?"
"No, I don't."
"Yet it released an electrical charge strong enough to blow a hole in it. How much energy would it take, given I couldn't scratch it with a tenderizer?"
I could almost hear the wheels turning in Frank's head. "You're worried a test might cause another discharge.”
"Wouldn't you be? It doesn’t have a battery, yet it held a powerful charge. What if it’s still holding a charge, and we add energy to it? Who knows what damage it could do."
Frank picked up the egg. "It doesn't look like much, does it?"
"That bothers me too."
"A delicate latticework object made of metal so thin it's like parchment. It has nothing inside, yet it produced an electrical charge strong enough to knock a kid out."
"That pretty much sums it up."
"The analysis—you're worried the results might be unusual?"
"The thought crossed my mind."
The phone on his desk rang. Frank let it go to voicemail.
"You bought the doll in Emersville?" he said.
"Yes."
"Kerry bought one there."
"I know."
"The store had a lot of tourist crap mixed in with a few solid works and a variety of toys."
"Lost Desires."
"That's the place." Frank drummed his fingers on the desk. "You know what we need to do."
"Oh, yeah."
&n
bsp; He shoved the egg in his pocket. "You with me?"
I downed the rest of my coffee and tossed the cup in the trash. "Where else would I be?"
* * *
Tuesday morning. Everyone in Frank's family had left for school: the kids for class; Kerry for work. We had the house to ourselves.
I'd been here almost weekly for years. I knew it as well as I knew my own home, and it had always felt welcoming. Today, I sensed an unease—a displeasure—as we walked through the front door. I stopped, my skin puckering into gooseflesh.
"You feel that?" I asked Frank.
He turned to stare at me. "Feel what?"
"I don't know. A sense. An impression, like someone isn't happy we're here."
"Don't start losing it, Paco."
I put my hand on his shoulder. "I'm not kidding."
Frank stared at me for a moment, then reached into the folds of his jacket and withdrew his sidearm. The sight of him holding a gun in his own house unnerved me further.
"Stay here." He left to check the house. It didn’t take long. When he returned, he had holstered his weapon. “Nothing."
"It's probably nerves." I felt foolish, like a kid entering a haunted house attraction on a dare and immediately bolting for the exit. "Don't mind me."
"Tell me if it gets worse." He headed down the hallway. I followed.
The living room looked much the same as it did on Friday night, with empty snack bowls and water glasses on the floor. There was only one difference.
“Where’s the doll?” I said.
"It was there when I left this morning." Frank gestured to the painted wooden chair in the corner. "Same as any other day."
"Maybe Kerry moved it?"
"I don't see why she'd—"
A loud crash came from the kitchen, followed by a clattering like an avalanche of metal.
We ran into the kitchen. The cupboard doors were open, their contents thrown onto the floor. Stock pots, sauté pans, a pressure cooker. Even the silverware had been tossed out. A solitary spoon rocked back and forth.
Frank's gun was back in his hand.
"Police!" he said. "Step out where I can see you! Keep your hands up!"
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