by Oak Anderson
There were also more sinister theories, theories that Anita dared not think about too long, but nonetheless danced around the dark recesses of her mind like busy moths around a campfire. She told herself that Thane was not capable of such things, but that may have been a lie she told herself to excuse her own attraction.
Like those moths, Anita felt herself drawn to the flame.
Thane was everything her husband wasn’t, tough and open and emotional and there. She could feel the passion come off him like a blast furnace whenever she was with him, and more and more had come to realize that she wanted to be in the middle of all that heat.
Anita knew it was wrong, and she was probably as conflicted about Thane as he was certain about her, but one thing she knew for sure: Thane would never have had a conversation with her about ‘working’ a suspect, or anyone else, for that matter. Not even to get ahead in her career, especially considering his own. He’d basically fucked himself because he was too stubborn to kiss ass, and that was something she respected. As she had often marveled, Thane was a man like her father, a man she sensed was a straight shooter in spite of his many faults, a feeling that grew stronger within her every time he was around.
She realized she was staring at him, and was suddenly aware of his eyes burning into hers.
Anita was almost breathless at that moment, and then they both stood up, together, each of them wordlessly acknowledging what they both knew was to come. Thane threw some cash on the table and they made for the door, bursting into the cool night air with an anticipation neither had experienced for quite some time.
That night they made love with urgency and abandon, with an almost feral intensity that carried them through to the morning and beyond. Neither of them thought of any of the complications that would follow, or the task force, or the system, or any of the obstacles most certainly headed their way. They only felt the call of their flesh, their sweat, their bodies, their needs.
For a few hours, those needs were more than met, and neither of them knew or perhaps even cared at that moment that it would be the last time they were, together.
Chapter Sixteen
It was the thirteenth officially verified TOWY murder-suicide in Greenville that cause the movement to go viral, led to the conflagration at Charlie’s house, and enabled the low-level NSA analyst to put all of the pieces together that would eventually allow the world to learn the full story behind one of the strangest socio-criminal enterprises the world had ever known.
Ironically, Charlie and Sarah, the creators of said movement, were probably among the last in the city to hear about it.
It was perhaps because the national news media and blogosphere had been obsessed with another partisan battle in Congress and a hostage standoff involving American oil workers in Nigeria that the developing series of deaths took so long to garner national attention, but when it finally did, it did with a vengeance.
Charlie had not been back to the house he shared with Brad since the day he and Sarah first made love, and it was their lovemaking that prevented them both from realizing, for a short time, exactly where they went wrong with the TOWY movement.
***
“When are you ever going back?” Sarah asked, not because she wanted him to, but because she knew he had to, and the sooner he did, the sooner they could get started on the rest of their lives together.
“I don’t know,” Charlie answered, outlining her nipple with his finger, a gesture that made the hair on the back of her neck stand up. He leaned over and kissed her, his lips opening only slightly to allow her tongue to push them apart in that awesome way she did when he was moving too slowly, which, so far, was every time they had sex.
This time she pulled away, which was unusual only because she had never done so with him in the weeks they had been together.
“You have to get more of your shit, dude,” she said, and he removed his hand from her breast and rolled over onto his back, staring at the ceiling.
“Right.”
Sarah turned on her side and moved her leg across his body, pushing in close and rubbing herself against his warm flesh. She took his hand and guided it back to her breast, the two of them kneading the soft flesh with fingers intertwined.
“I didn’t mean right this minute, chickless.”
Charlie laughed and rolled on top of her, moving himself between her legs and kissing her full on. Besides a virgin, the one thing he was definitely no longer, was chickless.
***
Thane was on the scene more quickly than the other murders because this time the Towy had sent a text to some goddamned news reporter, but he probably would have been dispatched whether or not it was immediately known to be a TOWY case.
It wasn’t every day that a bomb went off in a residential neighborhood, known more for its speed humps than its crime statistics.
The scene seemed like something out of Iraq, and it was probably a miracle that the TOWY farmer, in addition to himself and the pedophile whose name he’d plucked from the website, had taken out only a single innocent bystander.
A four year-old girl had been walking with her mother, who released her daughter’s hand mere seconds before the blast so she could run ahead and look at a squirrel that was sitting in the middle of the shady sidewalk, its bushy tail high and twitching as if it knew something much more dangerous than the girl was fast approaching.
The squirrel turned and ran up the gentle slope of a well-manicured yard just as the little girl’s eye caught something else, a man sitting in the driver side of a blue SUV, who appeared to be crying.
Their eyes locked in the instant before they both died, and each initially reacted to the sight of the other according to their nature. The man saw what might have been, a potential victim to his sick obsessions. The girl saw only tears.
The mother, once she was released from the hospital in the wheelchair she would need the rest of her life, told anyone and everyone that her daughter had had an almost sixth sense about the suffering of others, and would sometimes drag her over to adults they did not know, perfect strangers, offering them a hug and a smile and telling them that things would be okay.
“Feel better,” her daughter would say, as if she knew of some inner heartache. It was the first sentence she’d ever put together as a toddler.
The scene rocked Thane to his core. Thanks to the text, the media had arrived before the cops, almost simultaneous to the blast, and it was chaotic just clearing the people out of the area to survey the scene. There were dozens of people standing in the street, most of them with cell phones, eager to take pictures of the carnage and pass it amongst their social network like some viral venereal disease.
“Get those fucking people back!” Thane screamed at two uniforms, one of whom had what looked like vomit down the front of his otherwise impressively turned out shirt. They were trying to put up police tape while people were running back and forth to the smoking hull of the twisted vehicle. Firefighters and paramedics were on the scene, as well, treating several onlookers. “And that goddamn tape should be all the way back at the corner!”
At that moment, Thane wished he could bring back the asshole with the homemade bomb just so he could kill the guy himself. He looked up and saw four separate helicopters, all jockeying for the best vantage point from which to obtain that perfect blood-soaked, long focus shot through the trees that lined the street on either side and formed a semi-canopy over the wide, suburban street.
He also wouldn’t have minded taking out the creator of that fucking website. He’d been vaguely intrigued by the idea at first, like many others, but this was taking things too far.
Thane walked over to the first officers on scene, both of whom saw him approaching and waited with grim expressions. He could see several body parts only a few feet behind them. He had a fleeting thought that perhaps everyone should move away, that there could be a second blast, which was a typical tactic of terrorist bombings in other parts of the world to draw in a second wave of victim
s, but he discounted it immediately.
There would be a second wave of victims, all right, and then some, but this was not the work of terrorists. This was something else entirely, something a little scarier.
This was regular people who’d just had enough.
***
As Thane was talking to first responders not far from where the coroner was collecting two sets of intertwined arms and legs, Charlie and Sarah were making love for the second time that day. Their cell phones were on mute and the laptop on which they’d created the beginnings of such havoc was turned off for the first time in weeks.
They each wanted to explore the other’s body uninterrupted by the events of the outside world.
***
“It looks like they were embracing each other at the moment of detonation,” the coroner said drily, speaking to Thane as his assistants carefully loaded the human remains into special zip lock bags like so much road kill. He noticed Thane’s expression. “Budget cuts,” he said, and the detective immediately understood why they were using veterinary bags for the body parts, although he would have advised against it.
As he might have predicted, there would be a minor scandal after that particular bit of information came out during the Grand Jury proceedings months later, but Thane held his tongue. He was more interested in what the coroner had said before.
“What do you mean, ‘embracing’?”
***
Charlie and Sarah were locked in a lover’s embrace, their bodies smooth and glistening and molded together. Had one been hovering above the bed, it would have been hard to tell where one body began and the other ended.
***
“They were holding each other,” the coroner explained. “Hugging.”
***
She slid Charlie back inside her easily, as easily as he’d slipped out. She was straddling him now, moving to her own rhythm and pace, grinding herself against his pelvic bone to try and orgasm. He relaxed and let her move atop him, content to let her take control and merely grip her thighs and thrust upward when it felt right. It was amazing to Charlie how she could almost lose him and then pull him in again, just when he thought he was out.
***
Thane just looked at the coroner and again held his tongue. The perp was obviously hanging on for dear life because the pedo was trying to get out of the car before the explosion.
***
Sarah put her arms around Charlie’s neck and hugged him tightly, grinding her hips against his in a tight, circular motion. He could feel her clench around him, which made him harder. He hoped she was going to come because he didn’t think he could hold out much longer.
“Wait for me,” she whispered, her voice husky and hot against his neck.
***
“I’d rather not wait any longer,” the coroner said, and Thane shrugged his shoulders and released him with a look. The asshole was going to catch hell for those doggy bags and probably lose his job, anyway, why should Thane make his last months on the job any more uncomfortable than they had to be?
He called one of his officers over and told him to send the DNA kits directly over to the coroner’s office and ride along with the doomed son of a bitch and wait with him until forensics got there. Truthfully, he’d rather do all that shit out of the public eye, anyway. Sick fucks are mesmerized by this shit.
***
They climaxed together, or almost, anyway. The important thing was that they both came, arriving at the same place in close enough proximity that it felt like they’d passed some necessary milestone in their relationship. A sexual marker.
Sarah, the more experienced of the two, was more excited than Charlie, though the event was acknowledged by them both as a special moment in the way that young lovers mark such things. She knew just enough to understand that it didn’t happen all that often, whereas Charlie seemed to take it in stride and even look at it as a harbinger of things to come.
He had always been the more outwardly hopeful of the two, although inside, his darkest thoughts far surpassed her own.
After they almost came together, Charlie figured they simply weren’t totally in sync yet, but there would be many years to get things right.
That assumption, above all, was probably what sealed their fate, since it was his hope for their future that changed his mind about things, and which caused him to share those dark secrets he had, until that afternoon, kept so carefully hidden.
And so it would be trust that would bring them down, and love that would destroy them.
1 YEAR, 1 MONTH AFTER TOWY WEBSITE
Excerpted From Unsealed Indictment, Los Angeles County, California
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SUPERIOR COURT OF THE STATE OF CALIFORNIA
FOR THE COUNTY OF LOS ANGELES
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S57814
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The People of the State of California,.
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CASE NO. BA235772
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Plaintiff
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v.
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John Michael Davis
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INDICTMENT
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COUNT 1
The said JOHN MICHAEL DAVIS is accused by the Grand Jury of the State of California, County of Los Angeles, by this Indictment, of the crime of MURDER, in violation of Penal Code Section 187(a), a Felony, committed prior to the finding of the Indictment, and as follows:
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In the County of Los Angeles, said JOHN MICHAEL DAVIS did unlawfully, and with malice aforethought murder Lawrence Gonzales, a human being.
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“NOTICE: The above offense is a serious felony within the meaning of Penal Code Section 1192.7(c).”
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“NOTICE: Conviction of this offense will require you to provide specimens and samples pursuant to Penal Code Section 296. Willful refusal to provide specimens and samples is a crime.”
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The Indictment continued along those lines with the names of two more victims, all reputed members of the Alwood Street Locos. The primary evidence of guilt was a cell phone video uploaded to YouTube showing the father of a twelve year-old boy whose birthday gift, an iPhone, was allegedly stolen by the victims, who allegedly had bullied the boy after school on several previous occasions.
The day before he allegedly gunned down the three men, John Michael Davis, a working class man with a history of violence and emotional instability, visited a tattoo artist in West Covina who had become well known in certain circles for recreating an image he had originally designed for a repeat customer about a year before, a pretty but sullen young woman who first inked her body in honor of her older sister, Claire.
Chapter Seventeen
The man in the windbreaker just looked across the table at Brad, who didn’t think he looked much like a hitman. Not that Brad would have known, outside of the movies, what a hitman was supposed to look like.
“How do you know the kid knows?”
“Excuse me?”
The man in the windbreaker sighed heavily. He didn’t like this guy the moment he spoke with him on the phone. Even before that, actually. His caller ID had given his real name, for starters. What kind of idiot called someone like him from his goddamn home phone?
“Look, Mister Smith,” the man said, using the name the idiot had given after calling from his unblocked home phone, “this is not something you undertake lightly. As a matter of fact, it’s something to be avoided if at all possible.”
Brad sniffed. “Are you trying to talk yourself out of a job or something?”
That was another thing he didn’t like about Brad. Everything he said came out like he was talking to an employee, which technically, he was not, at least not until he’d accepted the job.
Which he was, at the moment, disinclined to do.
He leaned across the table and gave Brad the look, and waited until he either spoke or returned his gaze
with something that showed at least a modicum of sober caution and propriety he expected from all clients who hired him to kill people.
Brad opened his mouth and then shut it, as if he was finally thinking before he spoke.
Okay, I’m staying. But just.
“I actually don’t know for sure,” Brad answered finally.
“Then may I suggest you do a little investigation and make certain, because what I do is permanent and involves a bit of risk.”
Brad’s eyes narrowed. “For whom?”
Whom. Jesus Christ, everything about this guy bothers me.
“Who do you think, Mister Smith?”
Brad blinked. “Both of us?”
The man in the windbreaker smiled. “That’s right. And I like to mitigate my risks, which means I’m a last resort kind of guy. I’m the guy you come to when there’s no other choice, because that is a motivating factor for most people. I appreciate properly motivated clients. Clients with no other options. You seem like a man with options.”
“I can’t afford to wait,” Brad whispered. “He could ruin me if he knows.”
“And yet you don’t even know where he is.”
“I thought…maybe you…”
The man in the windbreaker just stared at Brad as he stammered out the words.
“Doesn’t that come with the service?” He asked hopefully. “I could add in some kind of…finder’s fee.”
The man shook his head. “When you find out where he is, call me back,” the man said, standing up. “It’s not imperative that you know everything he knows, but a motivated client probably would have that information, and I appreciate – ”
“ – properly motivated clients,” Brad finished, causing the man to briefly smile, a feeble thing that barely survived the atmosphere of his craggy, serious face and never quite reached his eyes. For the first time, Brad noticed how scary-looking the man was, and decided that windbreaker or no, he definitely looked like a hitman.