by Jay McLean
"What other channels?"
She grinned. "Best you don't know. There could be documents I haven't found yet. I didn't dare breach the FBI files. I don't want the feds to get a whiff of me."
I shook my head. I couldn't figure her out. "Why are you doing this? What's in it for you?"
"I'm just trying to help."
I tightened up again. I wasn't used to people being helpful. "Don't fuck with me. Nobody helps for no reason. Are you on the run and using my place as a hideout?"
Her back had gotten all stiff and bristly now and she sounded ticked off, too. "The only thing I'm on the run from is being homeless for a week. It's spring break, and my dorm got shut down because a water main broke and flooded the basement. As for why I'm helping you," she paused, shaking her head for a moment as if she weren't quite sure herself. "It's because you helped me. You didn't have to, but you did. I owe you." She dropped her voice low and intoned, "'The Lannisters always pay their debts.'"
"The Lannisters throw children off towers and fuck their sisters."
She grinned. "Ok, bad example. How about this: I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me."
"You don't seem like the Bible quoting type."
"You don't seem like the Bible quote-recognizing type."
I scowled. My mother had dragged Sean and me to Sunday school for years.
"I have this photographic memory," she added. "I could quote a whole lot more of the Bible, but you'd be bored."
"I've been bored with you since about five minutes after we met."
"Fuck you, Griff," she said, her attention already back on the computer screen.
And the truth was, for some peculiar reason, I wasn't bored at all.
Chapter Six
"So what do you think happened to her?" she asked as we were sitting at the kitchen table, eating the ziti with meat sauce she had cooked. It was tasty, nicely spiced. She'd whipped up garlic bread to go with it and even a salad. When I'd asked her where she'd found the groceries, she'd reminded me about the supermarket not far from the train station.
She'd neatened up the place, too. The bathroom had been scrubbed. The floors were clean, and I think she might even have dusted. She'd even made my bed, which, like, never happened.
"I don't know."
"You must have thought about it. Developed some theories."
"Of course I've fucking thought about it."
"The weird thing is that she disappeared without a trace. No blood. No sign of a struggle. Her place wasn't broken into and her car wasn't taken. They couldn't track her cell phone, which disappeared along with her. That's unusual, you know that, right? Most people don't know they need to disable those things."
I grunted. I hadn't forgotten the way she had disabled her own cell phone.
"Whoever grabbed her took her purse, too, along with her credit cards, bank cards, and various IDs. But none of that stuff was ever used. It's like she vanished off the face of the earth. Got beamed up by a starship. It makes no sense."
"The only thing I can figure is that she went for a walk and got ambushed by some wandering serial killer. He drove off with her, dismantled her cell or threw it in a pond, killed her, disposed of her body somewhere clever, and left the area. Someday in another state they'll find the guy and discover that he traveled cross country, killing women as he went."
"Would she get into a car with a total stranger?"
I looked at her, eyebrows raised. She blushed. "Okay. I suppose it could happen. But the whole thing stinks to me."
"What d'you mean?"
"It feels wrong. It's like someone committed the perfect crime. People don't just vanish."
"Actually, people do just vanish. It happens more often than you'd think."
Rory, obviously following a train of thought, ignored this. "Unless...maybe it was something to do with her wealthy friends. If she pissed off somebody rich and powerful, they could hire professionals to get rid of her, leaving no trace."
"I thought professionals shot you in the head and left the body."
"Well, these professionals wanted her to disappear completely."
"Why?"
"I don't know. Maybe she was into something weird."
I wondered if she had discovered anything about Hadley's unusual sexual interests. The cops had questioned me hard about that.
"I need a list of everything she was into. Everyone she was involved with. I've already checked out a lot of things. I know about her family, her friends, the places she volunteered at, the places she worked."
"You found all that out online?"
"Dude, there's not much you can't find out online these days. Especially if you can crack certain databases."
"The police have been all over this stuff, you know."
She was stubborn. "Fresh eyes. I might see something they didn't."
* * *
After supper I went into the living room and turned on the TV. There was a basketball game on that I wanted to watch. Rory stared belligerently at the speakers, loud with exuberant commentary and revved-up crowd noises, but she didn't comment. She planted herself in front of the computer again. I popped open a beer and set about trying to ignore her.
This proved to be difficult. I wasn't used to having girls around the place. Especially if they were doing something other than fucking me. Unlike some of my friends, I didn't grow up with sisters and I wasn't that close to my mother, so I'd never been too comfortable with women. Hadley had been my only long-term girlfriend, and our relationship hadn't been conventional. There'd been other girls over the years, plenty of them, but they were hookups, not people with whom I shared my living space.
I didn't seriously believe that Rory could uncover anything new about Hadley's disappearance. I didn't like cops, but I gave them their due—they'd done a decent investigation. Gathered all the threads and followed all the angles. The case was ice cold now that almost a year had passed. Rory could poke through it all again, but what was she going to learn? Nothing, nada, zip.
I knew the only reason I hadn't taken Rory by the scruff of her neck and forced her out my front door was that my dick was starting to do my thinking for me. Ever since I'd come home from work and found her back, I'd been extra-aware of her movements, her voice, her faintly feminine smell. I liked the way her thick brown hair bounced on her shoulders when she shifted her weight or turned her head. I liked her legs, which were long in proportion to the rest of her body, and her feet, which were dainty and small and always visible because she padded around barefoot. She was wearing chipped black polish on her fingers, but her toenails were unpainted. I wondered how she'd look in a pair of crazy-high heels.
The game was a blowout. During a commercial break, I muted the sound. Rory took this as a signal to restart the interrogation. She pushed the desk chair back from the computer table and whirled it around so she could look at me. She had pulled one leg up with her heel resting on the front of the seat and her chin leaning on her bent knee. She gave me her big irresistible smile again, and this time it had a deja vu quality about it. For a moment she reminded me of someone else with a smile like that, although I couldn't fathom who.
"So what's this job you have to go to, Griff? What kind of work do you do?"
"Construction."
I could feel her checking me out again. "Guys who work construction usually have good bods." I couldn't tell from her tone whether she thought I fell into this group or not. Probably not. I used to work out regularly with weights and run cross-country, but it had been a while since I'd done either. Work kept me in shape, but I was no longer in tiptop condition.
"At least I don't sit in front of a computer screen all day."
"True," she said cheerfully. "I'll probably be toting lard by the time I'm your age."
"I'm not that much older than you."
She laughed. "I know exactly how old you are."
Yeah, and
how much I had in my bank account, too. Not to mention what kind of porn I liked.
"What I don't get is, how come you have so many textbooks?" She nodded to a couple of bookcases up against the far wall. "You've even got some literary classics along with all the science fiction and fantasy stuff."
"I can fucking read," I snarled. I loved to read, in fact.
"If I didn't know better, I'd figure you were in college yourself. You're obviously not stupid."
"Gee, thanks. We can't all have an IQ of 204."
She waved a hand as if that were insignificant. "Those tests aren't that accurate, anyway."
"Don't worry. I'm not threatened by intelligent women." This was actually true. I had a lot of hang-ups about women, but brains wasn't one of them. I'd gone to a good high school and I'd known plenty of smart girls. Hadley had been an honors student.
Rory glowed when she heard this. When she lit up like that, it was as if she were channeling sunshine. She seemed to be remarkably cheerful considering her friends were prostitutes and their boyfriends were gun-toting whackos.
"Are you working construction because of some fallout from your girlfriend's disappearance? Is that why you dropped out of college?"
Yeah, and she knew that, no doubt, because she had access to my whole fucking life. Sunshine or no sunshine, I was starting to get irritated.
"You need to get it together and finish school so you're not stuck in a dead-end job for the next forty years."
"You know what? Fuck you. I've been grilled by professionals, baby, and I'm not gonna sit here and listen to you try to dissect my life."
I needed some exercise, so I slammed out the door and set out to run. Running made me feel better when I was stressed. My calves were tight, though, and the first mile was painful. Goddamn, but I really needed to work out more. I wasn't getting winded, but my muscles complained for a while before they settled down.
Rory wasn't the first person who'd given me shit about not finishing college. My mom went on about it so often that I'd been avoiding her. "Your brother was so proud of your good grades," she would say, working the guilt angle. "Sean was determined that you would get your degree. Have you forgotten the money he used to send for your college fund? He said you were smart enough to be a doctor or a lawyer someday, and that if anything ever happened to him, I should make sure you finished your education."
Yeah yeah. Sean had been a pain in the butt when he'd been my perfect big brother, but he was even more of a pain now that he was dead.
I told myself that a lot. What a shit Sean had been to me at times. Bigger, stronger, more athletic, more handsome. Kind to puppies and prone to helping old ladies cross the street. Volunteering to go fight terrorists and protect the homeland. Getting himself killed, and all for what?
Goddammit, I couldn't let myself think about Sean. The hole in my heart deepened into a black, bottomless well when I thought about Sean. Fuck. Sometimes I missed him so damn much.
Chapter Seven
Rory was in the kitchen sweeping the floor when I finally returned to the house. She had cleaned up. The dishes we'd used must be in the dishwasher, since I could hear it running. The kitchen table and counters were spotless.
The exercise had boiled off my head of steam. As I considered how neat the place was, I started thinking again that maybe it wasn't so bad to have a woman around. If I could only get her interested in something other than solving the mystery of Hadley's disappearance. Like how it would be to go down on her knees on my spotless kitchen floor and slide her wet tongue all over my cock.
"Hey," I said, walking into the living room and throwing myself down on the sofa. I switched on the game. It was over. I switched it back off again. "Are you a germaphobe or something? This place hasn't been so clean in months."
"You're welcome," she said, putting away the dustpan and broom and coming in to sit on the sofa with me. The far end of the sofa. "You're pretty damn touchy."
"You're pretty damn inquisitive."
She looked at me. Her hair was in her eyes, as usual, but it looked silky. I wanted to stroke it. Fist a handful of it and drag her face close to mine. I noticed her lips for maybe the first time. Before I'd been struck by the whole effect of her smile, but now I saw her lips as an individual feature. They were wide and plump, the bottom one especially. Soft. Kissable.
"I'm just trying to help."
"I still can't figure out why."
She shrugged. "I like puzzles."
"Maybe it's less of a puzzle than you think."
She cocked her head, looking intrigued. "How so?"
"Maybe I'm guilty. Have you considered that?"
"Would I have come back if I thought you were guilty?"
"Maybe you're not as smart as you think you are."
To my surprise, she nodded and said, "I'm not that smart about people. I mean, I don't have great people skills, as I'm sure you've noticed. I'm better with computers."
I snorted a laugh.
"Computers are logical. People aren't."
"How logical is it to crash in the same house with a guy who maybe murdered his last girlfriend?"
She was looking uncomfortable now. Even a little nervous. God, I'm such a dick. I was enjoying tormenting this cocky little stray who had flung herself, unwanted, into my life.
"Well, I'm not your girlfriend."
"There is that. If I only murder my girlfriends, I guess you've got nothing to worry about."
Her looking so uncomfortable was getting me hard. Or maybe it was just her being here, all soft and vulnerable. Fuck. She'd come back of her own accord. She'd cooked me dinner. Was she planning to sleep on the couch again tonight? Was she really that desperate for a place to stay, or did she maybe want me, too? Usually I could tell, but Rory was still a mystery to me.
Jeez. I was beginning to obsess about her. Which was crazy. We had nothing in common and we spent most of our time together bickering.
"What's your deal, Rory? You know a lot about me now, but I don't know much about you. Who the hell are you, anyway?"
She bristled. "I told you."
"So you're really a senior in college?"
She shrugged, looking defiant, which made me doubt it.
"What's your major?"
"Math. And computer science."
Figures. She had to pick something I didn't know much about. I tried anyhow. "What kind of math?"
She rolled her eyes as if to say, what the fuck would you know about it? "Applied. Algorithms, cryptography, stuff like that."
Okay, that was over my head. I'd been hoping to do well enough to get into some crappy law school someday, and that didn't require advanced math. As for cryptography, I guess that explained how she'd been able to break into my computer so easily. "What college?"
She glared at me for a moment, hesitating. I didn't think she was going to answer. But at last she looked away and muttered, "MIT."
I'd thought I was beyond surprise, but this was a zinger. "M. I. Fucking T?"
"Told you I was smart." Smug.
I tried to decide whether I believed this. Maybe it was time I looked her up on the internet. I couldn't mine web data the way she could, but if she went to an elite university, there must be traces of her out there. "So what were you doing in the slums last night?"
"Research."
"Research?" This sounded totally bogus. "What kind of research were you doing in such a bad part of town? You told me you were on spring break."
"Some kids head for the beaches, but me, I go to the projects. I figured I'd visit Mom, and check out the sex worker lifestyle. Not such a good choice, obviously."
"The Negotiable Pleasure Engineer?"
She grinned, probably because I recalled her terminology. "LaVerle's okay, even if she is a whore. My real mom has been pissing me off lately. She doesn't understand why I don't want to spend all my time with her."
"So you'd rather hang with an accused killer?"
She shrugged. I still didn't like her s
tory. She was lying about something, but I wasn't sure which part. "Who was the guy with the shotgun?"
"I told you. He's LaVerle's boyfriend."
"You mean her pimp?"
"Nah, she runs her own business. Ray's a guy she's been hooking up with. I think he helps out with the rent. She claims he's really sweet, but sometimes he forgets to take his meds, or maybe he takes too many, and then he's liable to freak out." She paused, not looking quite as confident as usual. "He scares the shit out of me."
"You should stay away from him," I said, as if I had any right to give advice.
She shivered. "Believe me, I intend to. I wish LaVerle would dump the guy. I worry about her."
And I'd thought my family had it bad, living in a college town where taxes were high and my mom had to struggle to make ends meet as a hairdresser. "What does your actual mom do for work?"
An odd gleam showed up in her eyes. "She's sort of a whore, too. Let's just say she gets paid to show off her boobs and sway her hips for a lot of admiring males."
"So she's, like, an exotic dancer?"
I noticed she was avoiding my eyes, but I had no idea what that meant. "Something like that."
I was trying to get my mind around the idea of somebody's mom being either a prostitute or a stripper. As far as I knew, it had been a long time since my mom had shown her boobs to anybody. Gross.
"Well, it sounds like you've come from a tough background."
She burst out laughing. I guess she saw disapproval in my expression because she controlled herself and said, "Sorry. Not laughing at you. Something just struck me funny. But yeah, I guess there are some things about my background that were tough."
Even though she pissed me off, at the same time I was feeling a kind of reluctant admiration. I tended to feel sorry for myself because I'd grown up poor in a rich town. I'd always been envious of the kids in my school who had more of everything than me and my brother had. But we'd gone to good schools and our mom had always provided for us, even when she'd had to work two jobs. She hadn't had to sell her body or take on crazy, whacked out boyfriends to make the rent.