Burden of Guilt

by Carter Brown

  “I’m glad,” I said sincerely. “You deserve nothing but the best, like me!”

  She flung her arms around my neck and kissed me, and the way she kissed was a kind of total experience all by itself. A long time later she gently moved her head away, and looked at me expectantly.

  “What comes next, Al?”

  “Comes next?” I echoed desperately.

  “Well, surely, you’re not lost for ideas? Your natural male ingenuity hasn’t dried up on you?” She laughed contentedly. “That I couldn’t believe—not a man with your obvious experience.” She stood up quickly. “Is that the door to the bedroom?”

  “The bedroom.” I nodded sagely.

  “Well, don’t you think we’ll be more comfortable in there? Or would you prefer the couch?” She studied it with interest. “Yes, I think it looks roomy enough.”

  “What? So soon?” There was the dryness in my throat again. “That sounds too cold-blooded, and where does that leave my male ego, and the chance to show you my seduction techniques that have been worked out and polished over many years? You’re not being fair. Soft music, coffee and liqueurs by candlelight—aren’t you going to give me at least a chance?”

  “A waste of time,” she said crisply. “I told you, I’m not one for beating around the bush.”

  “I know,” I said. “You’re a lady lawyer.”

  “So let’s get down to the briefs,” she said, beginning to unbutton her dress with calm efficiency.

  I must have looked a picture of total imbecility gaping at her while she shucked off first the dress, then the skimpy black bra and panties that clung so precariously to the statuesque glory of her body. Then she straightened, and allowed me to behold the banquet that was about to come.

  Her skin was like alabaster, reflecting a soft ruby glow, and highlighting all the important features, from the soft rose tint of her dark-rose, fully extended nipples, to the gentle rise of her abdomen, to the black delta of her pubis staring back at me from about eye level.

  “You’re hesitating, Al Wheeler,” she said in that matter-of-fact voice of hers. “You’re not being positive. You’ve still got your clothes on.”

  “Oh? Oh… sure,” I muttered, dragging my eyes away from the vision immaculate for as long as it took me to pull off my own clothes and leave them in an untidy heap on the floor, so that the room was crowded with two visions immaculate, one of them with a blood-engorged rod angling up through the space between them.

  Nor did she belie her promise of wasting no time, from the moment she took my straining prick between her cool fingers and began doing crisp things to it with her tongue, running it up the length of the stem, then dry-kissing the tip with her lips, so that the juices quickly became restless and ready for the foray to come. At the same time my own hand reached out and began to play soft arpeggios against the palpitating sponginess between her legs, which she opened a little wider to give my fingers more room. They prodded and probed, and became more moist in the process.

  This went on for a while, but it couldn’t last forever. Moira was a girl who didn’t believe in wasting time, and she was taking the initiative after all. I lay back on the couch, while, still firmly clasping my stem, she brought one leg over me, and lowered herself onto me. The moist lips of her vagina closed over my rearing stem, which was slowly swallowed up as she brought herself down onto it, until our pubic hair was brushing.

  Her body moved expertly as she raised herself up almost to the head of my rod, then lowered herself again to the hilt. Her breasts surged with the movement of her body. Bringing up my hands, I cupped, then squeezed them. Her head was tilted back on her neck, and her eyes were half closed. Her buttocks ground gently against my groin, and my juices began to loosen up. Then, as her movements became quicker, and I could tell she was at the moment of reaching her climax, I relaxed my control to fuel her climax with my own.

  It was some time after that, with her lying on top of me and both of us pleasantly drowsy, that the telephone rang.

  “You don’t have to answer it, Al,” she murmured. “Let it ring.”

  Gently, I disengaged her body from mine, and padded across the carpet to the phone. I grunted ungraciously into the mouthpiece.

  “Strachan here, Lieutenant.” He sounded excited. “I’ve just had that call from Dana!”

  “Fine,” I said. “When and where?”

  “He wants me to meet him tonight, now, as soon as I can make it. It would be too dangerous for both of us if he came to the hotel, he said, because he thinks Cordain will have somebody watching for him.”

  “Sure,” I said. “So where does he want you to meet him?”

  “On the old canyon road. He gave me detailed instructions on how to get there, but you’d know it, I imagine, Lieutenant.”

  “I know it!”

  “About a half-mile from the turnoff on the way up Bald Mountain, there’s an old wooden shack on the lefthand side. He’ll meet me there.”

  “Just how careful can he get?” I said.

  “That’s what I thought, Lieutenant. But he wouldn’t take any argument. It was either I meet him there, or forget the whole thing. So, naturally, I agreed.”

  “Naturally,” I said.

  “Well, I guess I should be on my way, Lieutenant. When I get back I’ll let you know the outcome of the—”

  “You put one foot outside that hotel tonight, Mr. Strachan,” I snarled, “and you’ll spend the rest of the night in the county jail!”

  “What?” He made choking noises for a while. “Are you insane, Lieutenant? How dare you threaten me! What this man, Dana, may have to offer could be vital to the future of the plant, and I intend to see him. Besides, on what possible count could you have me arrested when I step onto the sidewalk outside the hotel?”

  “I’ll think of something in the morning,” I said grimly. “The county jail is a little old-fashioned, Mr. Strachan. If the two individual cells are already taken by the time you arrive, you’ll have to spend the night in the drunk tank. That isn’t so bad if the rest of them are all drunks, you understand. It only gets tough if there are a couple of dope addicts in the bunch. They need a fix, and the need gets progressively worse all night. It’s almost impossible to keep your eyes shut and your ears blocked the whole time!”

  “You don’t scare me, Wheeler!” he shouted in my eardrum. “This is all a big bluff! You wouldn’t dare have a man of my standing arrested on some trumped-up charge! My lawyer would—”

  A hand came over my shoulder and took the phone away from me.

  “Let me talk with him,” Moira said in a calm, totally efficient voice. She listened in silence for a while until, I guessed, Strachan finally ran out of breath.

  “This is your lawyer speaking, James,” she said quietly. “Do as the lieutenant says and stay right where you are inside the hotel.” She listened for another ten seconds. “He’s not bluffing, he means every word of it. Why do you think I’m here now?” She gave me a sudden bawdy wink. “I’ve been fighting with him for the last hour, because I knew this would happen once you had the call from Dana. There’s been a patrol car out front of the hotel for the last hour, and another man watching the back.… I heard him give the order myself, James. The moment you step outside the hotel, they are to arrest you and put you inside the county jail for the rest of the night… This isn’t Los Angeles, James! Of course he can get away with it in a one-horse town like Pine City!” She listened for a few more seconds, and her mouth tightened. “James”—the whiplash was back in her voice—“I’ve told you the realities of the situation! Right here and now you can forget the statute book because it doesn’t exist in Pine City tonight. But if you’re determined to spend the rest of the night in the drunk tank, you please yourself, and I hope the roof leaks!”

  She hung up, then walked across to the table at the end of the couch and picked up the drinks.

  “Thanks,” I said humbly.

  “He was only blustering when I hung up on him,” she said.
“He won’t get anywhere near the hotel lobby even. James has led a comparatively sheltered life and the thought of spending a night in jail—never mind the drunk tank!—is enough to induce stark terror in his suburban respectable mind.” She walked toward me, her breasts jiggling with each step. “You’ve stopped James from keeping the appointment because you want to take his place, right?”

  “Right,” I said bleakly.

  I took the drink she offered me, and just stood there looking at her.

  Her body seemed to be glowing with satisfaction, and the sight of it caused my lolling prick to stir again. It was a pity there was no time, I thought, for another, longer screw right now. Later maybe. I raised my glass. “To the next time around.”

  She smiled sleepily and raised her own glass. “Anytime you like, Al,” she said huskily. “But you have to go, don’t you?”

  “Well,” I muttered, stroking my jaw, trying to think of some way around it.

  “Al?” The ray of hope that gleamed in her eyes died an almost instant death. “No, I guess it’s impossible! It does have to be you, doesn’t it? I mean, there’s nobody else who could do it for you?”

  “Not at this time of night,” I muttered. “A patrol car would be like sending Dana a letter of intent and—” I stared at her wildly for a moment. “You’re nothing if not a genius, Moira, honey! And I do mean the wonderfully sexy type of genius, too!”

  “I’d like that better if I was sure your brain hadn’t suddenly snapped,” she said dubiously.

  I dived across to the phone and dialed the sheriff’s office. The guy on the desk answered before the third ring, and I was impressed.

  “This is Wheeler,” I said. “Let me talk with Sergeant Polnik, please.”

  “Sure thing, Lieutenant.” The line hummed emptily for a few seconds, then the gravelly voice sprayed my eardrum.

  “Polnik here, Lieutenant.”

  “I want you to do something for me, Sergeant,” I said carefully. “It’s important. Do it right, and I figure there’s a good chance the sheriff will be so pleased, you’ll be back on the day shift tomorrow morning.”

  “Chee!” He was all choked up with emotion for a couple of seconds. “If that happened, then maybe my old lady would start talking to me again! Who do you want killed, Lieutenant?”

  “You know the fork off Bald Mountain onto the old canyon road?”

  “Like I know my old lady’s—” He coughed hurriedly. “Sure, I know it, Lieutenant.”

  “There’s an old wooden shack about a half-mile up. A guy called Dana is waiting there. He’s expecting another called Strachan to visit with him. You’re going to be Strachan, until you can get close enough to put a pair of handcuffs onto him.”

  “I get it, Lieutenant. What then?”

  “You bring him back, book him as an accessory to first-degree homicide, and then you call me at home.”

  “Good as done, Lieutenant.”

  “Take your own car,” I said. “And have a gun in your hand when you go in after him. Dana is around forty, average height and weight, thinning blond hair and blue eyes. Looks like everybody’s best pal, and the moment he realizes you’re a cop, he’ll probably try and put a couple of slugs through your head. So don’t get brave, right? The moment he even looks like trying anything, you let him have it first.”

  “I got you, Lieutenant.” Polnik’s tone of voice said he was humoring the lieutenant, because the guy meant well; and there was no point in telling him that the sergeant had been handling that kind of situation in exactly the same kind of way he was suggesting for the last twenty years.

  “Let’s check it back,” I said.

  “An old wooden shack about a half-mile from the fork, up the old canyon road,” the sergeant said stolidly. “Inside is a guy called Dana, who is expecting another guy called Strachan. I’m Strachan until I can get close enough to slap the bracelets on him, then I bring him back, book him on an accessory to first-degree homicide rap.” He took a deep, audible breath. “Then I call you at your place.”

  “You’ve got it,” I said. “Maybe, if you put your headlights on high beam as you approach the shack—”

  “Yes, sir, Lieutenant!” He didn’t try to keep the yawn out of his voice.

  “Take care, Sergeant,” I told him.

  “You know me, Lieutenant.” He chuckled noisily. “If anything even looks like trouble, I head for the nearest phone and call the FBI.”

  There was a sharp clunk in my ear as he hung up. I put the phone down and checked my watch. It was a quarter of ten. If everything went exactly right for him, it would take at least ninety minutes for the round trip, I figured, and felt the warm glow inside my stomach suddenly explode into a redhot fireball.

  “Is it far out of town?” Moira asked in a small voice.

  “I figure it’s a ninety-minute round trip at the absolute minimum,” I said gleefully, pulling her back down onto the couch and turning her over so that those magnificent buttocks were turned up to me. “So—”

  I stroked her rump with the flat of my hand, then working it around to her front, my fingers pressing into the moist, wiry hair of her crotch, then sliding in through the open receptive flesh, I pulled her up to me. My yard was ramrod-stiff by now.

  “Your bottom is not only beautiful,” I said, guiding my organ into the warm sheath that showed beneath those molded orbs, which I then gripped hard, “it’s eloquent. It communicates. I can hear it speaking to me right now.”

  She shuffled back a little on her knees so that her bottom was pressed against me. My yard was inside her to the hilt. It began to move effortlessly between the enclosing, lubricated walls of her passage.

  “Just skip the chitchat,” she said breathlessly, “and do your own communicating.”

  Chapter Six

  We lay in each other’s arms, sated for the time being. “That was great,” Moira murmured dreamily. “Just great.”

  “We aim to please,” I said modestly.

  “I am both complete and replete.” She sighed contentedly and began to play abstractedly with my limp organ. “I am consumed with the warmth of a sated afterglow. My body and mind both give you their heartfelt thanks.”

  “We thank you for your kind words,” I said lazily. “Any written testimonial you may care to give will be highly appreciated by the management.”

  I gently eased her riffling fingers away from my groin, and rolling over onto my side, felt for my watch, which I had left on the low table at the other end of the couch.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Looking for my watch.”

  “What time is it?”

  My groping fingers finally located the watch, and I glanced at it. “It’s twenty after midnight,” I told her.

  “Then that was quite a marathon,” she observed mildly.

  I got up off the couch and walked across to the phone. The guy on the desk took a little longer to answer this time.

  “This is Wheeler again,” I told him. “Did Sergeant Polnik get back yet?”

  “Not yet, Lieutenant.”

  “What time did he leave?”

  “Right after you called him last time. Anything we can do, Lieutenant?”

  “Not right now, thanks,” I said. “You call me the moment he gets back, huh?”

  “Sure thing, Lieutenant.” The voice was very bland. “What number are you at?”

  “My apartment,” I growled. “Where else?”

  “No offense, Lieutenant.” The voice was blander than bland. “It’s just that the good word on the night shift is to always check with the lieutenant what number he’s at if the call is after midnight.”

  “There’s got to be more to the good word than that,” I said suspiciously.

  “Well, the way it goes, if a female voice answers you know you’ve got the right number!”

  “That’s a riot,” I growled. “What’s your name?”

  “Patrolman Stevens, Lieutenant.”

  It hit a vague bell. A young guy
with a college education who was that phenomenon, the model cop. He was all set for a meteoric career, unless he got smart and quit to get into some other line of work where they would pay him some real money.

  “I think we have a mutual friend,” I said in a buddy-buddy voice. “Didn’t I see you the other night with a well-stacked chick called Avril Jones?”

  “Would that be Monday or Tuesday night, Lieutenant?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “No, sir.” The voice was very smooth indeed. “That well-stacked chick was a certain little number by the name of Toni Del Guardo.”

  “How about that!” I said in an awed voice, then turned my head slightly away from the phone and bellowed, “Hey, Toni! Small world!”

  I hung up, turned around, and saw a pair of solemn gray-green eyes watching me over the back of the couch.

  “I’d forgotten about the sergeant, I’m sorry,” she said quietly.

  “Like I said before, the fastest he could have made the round trip would be ninety minutes, and that would be with everything going sublimely right for him,” I said. “So that makes him about an hour over the possible track record. A whole bunch of piddling no-account hold-ups could have caused the delay.”

  “You’re worried,” she said.

  “Not yet,” I snapped. “If he’s not back inside the next hour, then I’ll start worrying.”

  “You’re a wonderful lover, and a lousy liar, darling Al,” she said softly. “I’ll get dressed, and you can drop me at the hotel on your way.”

  I stopped the car outside the Starlight Hotel around twenty minutes later. Moira Arthur got out of the car, then leaned her head back inside.

  “I hope everything went all right with your sergeant.” She smiled slowly. “It’s been a fabulous night, but I guess it has to come to an end some time, as most things do. I got what I wanted, and I hope you did, too. So thank you again. My body is grateful to you.”

  She walked quickly into the hotel, and I gunned the car away from the curb. It was a bright moonlit night, and just late enough for other traffic to be almost nonexistent. I decided the legal sixty limit was just a figment of my own imagination, and I could safely ignore it. The purr from under the hood quickly became a snarl, and it seemed no time at all before the tach needle was hovering in the red zone at the wrong end of the dial.