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That was easy. Tasia was a very beautiful woman whenever she bothered to clean herself up. Beautiful, and yet so childlike. Perhaps that was what Carl liked best about her; being with her was enough to make a middle-aged man nearing middle age feel young again.
Her voice was very high and her hair was the color of straw in full sunlight. She had a cute, round face and pale blue eyes. The tight dresses she loved to wear accentuated her nearly perfect, one-hundred-and-ten-pound figure on her slender, five-foot-seven-inch frame.
Usually ruddy-complected, Tasia obviously liked to soak up a lot of sun or a lot of booze, or both. At other times she looked pale and sickly, as if staying on her feet was the biggest chore of the day. Elaine didn’t realize it at the time, but Tasia had the look and manner of someone who used hard drugs. Among other things, she abused heroin and cocaine. After awhile she even managed to graduate to crack and to “chasing the dragon” as they say on the street, but that was a different, even uglier story.
Suffice it to say that beneath her sometimes hard, don’t-give-a-damn exterior, there was a very vulnerable young woman who desperately needed a responsible adult’s guidance and love. Never finding it was probably the most devastating part of her life. In one glance, she looked like the kind of woman who couldn’t say no to anyone, especially Carl Kastenmeier.
The Tattered Thread Page 10