There’s always some cop who thinks he can beat the
system. It’s my job to stop them.
I know what they call me over in the main building, where
all the patrol officers and detectives and administrators work.
Rat.
Cheese-eater.
Traitor.
Asshole.
I know that they sneer when my name comes up. They act like the only important work in the
world is the work that they are doing right then. No one else has anything of value to offer. It’s egocentric arrogance. Nothing less.
I sit at my desk and stare down at the
small stack of files. I know the
secrets within them better than anyone else.
Better than the Chief of Police, who makes his decisions based on my
investigations. He reads the Cliff
Notes version of what I do. And I know
he holds his nose while he does it.
Who else on this job could do the work
I do? Not a one of them. I know it.
They are too blinded by their loyalty to the badge they wear to see that
there is a greater loyalty to the community we serve. They couldn’t take down a guy they went through the Academy with,
even if he was wrong.
They are simplistic beings, most cops,
and easily corrupted by the power they wield.
Some make honest mistakes, a few quietly whisper rumors to me, but most
blatantly defy the rules.
In the files in front of me, I knew I
had a guy who was sleeping away most of his shift under the freeway.
Another who was sleeping with a
prostitute.
A third took free meals from a
breakfast diner downtown.
And this was just on this week’s
agenda.
Last week, I worked a guy who, while
off-duty, got into a fight at a McDonald’s and overreacted badly, beating a
civilian. A minority, no less. And he did it to impress the widow of his
dead partner. I’m certain they were
having an affair long before the death of Anthony Battaglia.
Some people, when they spit out my
name, drone on that the Department shouldn’t worry about their private lives
and that you can't legislate morality.
They’re wrong. When they accepted that badge and took an
oath, they relinquished all rights to be immoral.
This is my life. To make sure their life is unblemished.
And to make sure they pay for their
mistakes.
Internal affairs is nestled away from
the police station in an office space across the street. The address is 1094 West Mallon and
predictably, cops on the street have made “1094” code for an IA interview.
The other tenants of the four-story
building are business people (with the exception of the Special Investigations
Unit on the third floor) and I feel more at home with them than I ever did with
cops. Unlike cops, they don’t have the
arrogance that comes with thinking you’re above the law. They understand professionalism and they
seem to understand that they job is resting on their performance.
I doubt any of them would ever dream of
sleeping away a shift under the freeway.
To the person, these people are well
dressed and well mannered. I wish
sometimes that I could tap one of them to give lessons at the PoliceAcademy or at one of our quarterly
in-service trainings on how to be professional. But I know the type-A’s in the audience would just make smart
replies, endure the class and then rip on them during the break.
Near the elevators is Gambini’s Real Estate
office. That’s where she worked. Carie, with one ‘r.’
I never noticed her before I heard a
rumor that she was seeing a cop while he was on-duty. This was a common tactic I encountered, cops using the badge to
chase tail. It was unprofessional, but
if they restricted it to their own time, then there wasn’t a lot I could do
about it. But when the courting
occurred on duty, there was plenty I could do.
It was dereliction of duty and conduct unbecoming an officer.
So I started using the third floor
restroom and taking the elevators to get there. As I stood and waited for the elevator, I would watch her
through the pane of glass next to the door.
She definitely fit what most cops were
chasing. Her hair was long and
raven-black. She was thin like a
gymnast but too tall to have ever excelled in that sport. Her breasts jutted out beneath her business
attire and I decided on the second visit that they had to be fake. A pair of librarian glasses perched on her
nose. While I watched her work, she
seemed alternatingly focused and flustered.
When the phone would ring, she would snatch the receiver up with a
pinched, irritated scowl.
For a week, I watched her. I was starting to wonder if the rumor were
true at all. She was attractive enough
to warrant attention from an officer, but she seemed to be too high maintenance
for anything long-term. Maybe it had
just been a fling, I thought. Maybe
some cop met her at during a walkthrough at a dance club and then dated her a
time or two.
Still, there was something about her…
Regardless, I kept up my watch and
once, I thought I’d hit pay dirt. I was
coming out of the bathroom, approaching the elevator alcove when I heard the
tinny sound of a voice coming over a police radio and a male near the elevator
say, “Copy, I’m clearing Special Investigations right now.”
I slowed to a stop and stood still,
listening from around the corner.
“Lucky you,” said one voice.
“Fuck you, Norris,” came the
light-hearted response. “Keep cracking
wise and I’ll suddenly need some back-up on this call.”
Norris, Norris. We had an Officer Aaron Norris. He was buddies with—
“How’d that look? The two amigos both heading up south
together to pick up a found wallet?”
Norris asked.
“Like a couple of homos,” Virgil
Gilliam told him.
“Right,” Norris said.
“What the fuck is up with this elevator?”
I heard several soft clicks.
“The light’s on, man,” Gilliam
said. “Pushing it isn’t going to help.”
“Won’t hurt, either.”
“Maybe it starts over every time you push
it.”
“Fuck you,” Norris chimed.
“Idiot.”
“You wanna take the stairs?”
“No, it’ll—” Gilliam started to reply.
“Holy shit!”
Norris’s voice took on an excited tenor. “Check out the trim in
there.”
“Where?”
“The real estate office.”
There was a pause. “Through the
glass next to the door, dumb ass.”
“Oh,” Gilliam said.
“Yeah, she’s hot.”
Norris gave a low whistle.
“Hot? She’s fucking
gorgeous. Look at those melons. She could dial a phone with those nipples.”
“Nice,” Gilliam agreed.
“Nice?
They’re perfect, those tits.”
“You think they’re real?”
Norris didn’t hesitate. “Can you touch them? That’s real enough for me.”
Gilliam chuckled. The elevator dinged. “Ride’s here,” he said.
Norris wasn’t listening. “Oh man, look at her. I’m telling you, she’d be a wild fuck. You know that? I mean, she’d want you to hammer her from behind over the back of
the patrol car some night up at Manito Park or something.”
My ears pricked up at that.
Gilliam snorted. “You may have jerked off up at Manito, but
don’t try to tell me you’ve fucked anyone there.”
“First time for everything, Gilly. First time for every—”
“You don’t want a piece of her,
anyway,” Gilliam said. “Now, come on,
I’m tired of holding this door open already.”
I heard the creak of leather as Norris
moved away from me.
“Why not? She’s totally hot.”
“She’s loca, man. Crazy. A fucking loon.”
“Whatever,” Norris said, and I heard
the slight echo of his voice. He must
have entered the elevator.
“It’s in her eyes,” Gilliam said. “She’d fuck you like a wildcat, maybe, but
then she’d turn around and stab you in the face with a kitchen knife. Trust me.”
“In her eyes? What kind of bullshit is—”
The door slid shut on Norris. His voice was muffled and then gone.
I walked around the corner and looked
through the glass next to the thick, ornate door to the real estate
office. She sat at the receptionist
table, arranging pieces of paper on her desk.
She had her hair up like a repressed librarian and the thin-framed
glasses she wore only reinforced that image.
The tan sweater she had on was snug and spotlighted her breasts. I saw that Norris had been right about her
nipples.
Even so, Norris wasn’t fucking her and
neither was Gilliam. That was apparent
from their discussion, which I believed had been entirely honest. The few times people have known I was nearby
and have had conversations for my benefit, it was painfully obvious. Cops are good at detecting lies, but they
are not always good liars themselves.
They were hell on gossip, though. I wondered if the rumor I’d heard was merely
that—gossip born out of some scene similar to that which had just occurred with
Norris and Gilliam. I could see one of
them or someone just like them describing Carie to their buddies over coffee
and say how much they’d like to bed her.
The rumor mill would need about seven seconds to turn that grist into
flour and suddenly “some cop” was sleeping with her and it gets whispered in my
ear.
I watched her for a while longer, until the ding of the
elevator interrupted my thinking. All
the while she didn’t look up. Her face
had a vague sense of panic on it as she worked.
It was possible, I thought. But not terribly likely.
My idea of the rumor mill or maybe just a quick fling was more likely.
I had other files to return to, I
decided. This was a false alarm.
I got onto the elevator and rode down
to the second floor. Back in my office,
I got to work on the files on my desk, and mostly forgot about the whole thing.
Then she came to my office.
The door to my office is locked with a
key code that only I know. Not even the
Chief knows it and he’s plenty happy to tell people that so they don’t think
we’re in cahoots. None of the patrol
officers believe him, of course, but it’s true.
There’s only two ways into my office
without kicking the door in. One is to
have the code and enter from the outside.
The other is for me to buzz someone in from my desk. That’s how she came.
The buzzer has an airy tone to it. I replaced the harsh “gggzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz”
that the office supply people put in with a nicer one that I paid for
myself. When it went off two days after
I’d overheard Norris and Gilliam, it surprised me. I didn’t have any interviews scheduled for the entire morning.
I pushed the reply button. “Lieutenant Hart.”
There was a pause, then a female
voice. “I need to talk to someone,” she
said. It was the voice of someone from
an old black and white movie. Someone
being chased by a villain. Maybe one in
a fedora. Or with black gloves.
I pushed the release buzzer and she
seemed to just glide through the doorway.
She was graceful, but her movements had a frantic undertone. This was the first time I’d seen her when
she wasn’t behind a desk. Her frame was
even thinner that I’d thought, though her hips had some curve to them. Her ample breasts appeared even more out of
place when she was standing than when she was hidden behind the desk.
“Are you…the internal affairs officer?”
she asked.
“I’m Lieutenant Hart,” I answered.
“I need…some help,” she said.
I motioned toward the door. “Close that.”
“Oh.”
She let the door swing closed.
I pointed to the chair in front of my
desk. “Please, sit down.”
She took a seat, sitting on the edge
and leaning forward. The top button of
her white blouse was unbuttoned and I could plainly see the swell of her
breasts pressing against her lacy white bra.
I reminded myself to be professional and forced my eyes up to focus on
her eyes. But my glance kept being
drawn down to her cleavage. She didn’t
move.
Even when I focused on her eyes, things
weren’t much easier. They were a deep
brown and doe-like. It wasn’t just that
they were soft, but also that they were suffused with the tension that
wilderness prey held. A certain skittishness,
as if she were always on the edge of bolting from the room at the first hint of
danger.
But that wasn’t all, was it? No, it wasn’t. Just that much would have made her pitiful, or maybe someone I
could even dredge up some sympathy for.
There was more, though.
I broke the short silence. “What can I do for you, Miss?”
“Carie,” she said with a flicker of a
smile. “With one ‘r.’”
I nodded to her. “Carie, then. What can I help you with?”
Her eyes cast around the room for a
moment. She took a breath, started to
speak and stopped short.
“Anything you say to me will remain
confidential,” I assured her.
Her gazed locked onto me then and I saw
with certainty what that other thing was.
It was a sultry pull in those eyes, a look that says, I need your help and I will reward you well. It was the look that asked, no, it begged you to be her hero.
“I’m having a problem with…a police
officer,” she said.
I steepled my fingers, feeling my heart
race with excitement, though if it were her eyes and breasts or the prospect of
the hunt, I wasn’t sure. “What sort of
problem?”
She took another breath and let it out,
stopping short again. Then she shook
her head and started to stand up. Her
chin dropped to her chest. “No, I
shouldn’t have come.”
I stood with her, holding my hands
out. “No, no, it’s all right. Carie, wait.”
She paused at the sound of her name and
looked up at me. I was surprised that I
had used her first name so easily. It
wasn’t professional. I’d been around
people for years and still called them by their last name or title. Just because the rest of the world had
become so informal and unprofessional didn’t mean I had to follow suit.
But I felt I knew her already, having
seen her through the glass next to the solid oak door on those occasions. And the way she looked at me, singling me
out to help her…it forced a sense of duty upon me.
“Everyone wonders if they are doing the
right thing when they come in here,” I said in a soft voice. “But the answer is always yes. And you already know that, because if it
wasn’t, you wouldn’t have come in here in the first place.”
She continued to watch me from beneath
her long lashes. “Really?”
I nodded. “You’re doing the right thing.
It’s the only way to make things better.”
She let out a long, wavering sigh.
“Please,” I said. “Sit back down.”
She lowered herself into the chair, her
eyes locked on mine. I felt a small ripple
of exhilaration in my chest and a larger flooding of warmth and hardness in my
cock. I swallowed, but only the ripple
went away.
“Where should…where should I start?”
she asked me.
“At the beginning,” I said, trying to
sound strong and full of authority. I
sat down and hoped she didn’t see the small beads of perspiration at my
temples.
“The beginning,” she said. “Okay.”
She spoke in that same tentative voice,
as if she were afraid that the words themselves were the predators that she had
to be wary of. I had to reassure her
several times that she was all right and that she was doing the right
thing. My efforts were rewarded with a
grateful, almost beaming look from those dark eyes.
In the end, though, she didn’t say
much. She’d met and dated a police
officer on a couple of occasions.
They’d slept together once, a fact which she was quick to label as an
awful mistake. Her mother had been sick
back in Cleveland and she’d been
lonely for home and he’d simply taken advantage of that.
She broke it off with him a few days
after the sexual encounter, but he hadn’t taken it well.
“Sometimes men…,” she told me, “don’t
listen to me. They think what I say
doesn’t matter.”
I nodded that I understood and that it
was wrong of them and she continued her story.
The officer had called her repeatedly,
even after she stopped answering the phone or returning his calls. Sometimes he would call for hours at a
time. He’d leave messages, and the
messages scared her. In the background
of some of the calls, she could hear a police radio, so she believed he was
calling her from work.
“What scares you about the phone
calls?” I asked her.
“They’re possessive,” she said. “And…he changes. Sometimes he says he loves me, sometimes he calls me terrible
names. It’s not stable.”
I gave her another nod. “He sounds obsessed.”
“Yes,” she answered. “And it’s not just the telephone. He comes by my house and parks up the
street.”
“In his police car?”
“Sometimes. Other times in his truck.”
“Does he do anything?”
She shook her head. “Just watches. Or calls me on his cell phone.”
“What else does he do?”
“Comes by my work.”
“On duty or off?” I asked her.
“Both,” she said. “That scares me even more than at my house,
because I work right here in this building.”
“Oh?”
“Yes, up on the third floor. Gambini Real Estate?”
I nodded and wrote it down. “Why does that scare you more?”
“Because it’s so…close. I mean, his workplace is in the building
right next door and I know that there are police units here in the building,
too.” She met my eyes with gaze that
was a mixture of prey and seductress.
“If he’s willing to do that so close to his job, it makes me wonder how
far he’ll go.”
I was still nodding. She was right. If we were willing to risk his career, then he’d risen to a
danger level that was very concerning. In fact—
“Is there anything you can do?” she
asked me and her voice had the same quality as those eyes.
I nodded. “Of course. What he’s
doing isn’t just harassment or chasing girls on duty. It amounts to stalking, and that’s a crime.”
Her eyes widened. “A serious one?”
I shrugged. “It’s a misdemeanor if the guy’s never been
convicted of it or a DV crime before.
But it’s still a crime.”
She pressed her lips together and shook
her head. “I don’t want him to get in
trouble.”
My mouth fell open. “Carie, he’s stalking you!”
“He’s…in love. I want it to stop, but I don’t want to ruin
his life over it.”
“I thought you were afraid of him.”
“I am,” she said. “And I’m afraid of what he might do if I
have him arrested, too.”
“Meaning what?”
She averted her eyes and they flitted
around the room. “He might…kill me,”
she managed.
I dropped my pen and leaned back in my
chair. This didn’t make sense.
Her eyes came back and fixed me with
another one of her enigmatic looks. Her
eyes were glassy now, filled with tears that didn’t fall. “You don’t believe me,” she said, her voice
breaking.
“Oh, I believe you that this is
happening,” I said. “I definitely
believe that. It’s not the first time a
cop has let his relationships get him in trouble on the job.” I was thinking of the phrase that old TAC
officer at the academy used when we neared graduation. Sergeant DeMarcus had been his name.
Two
things will get you in more trouble on this job than anything else, boys,
he’d said. Two things. Then he’d
paused and let a little grin touch the corners of his mouth before letting us
in on the bit of wisdom. A wine glass and a woman’s ass, he’d
said and everyone laughed. But Sergeant
DeMarcus, who also laid out some bullshit about things no longer being black
and white, was dead accurate on this particular count. Right in the ten ring.
“Maybe I should go,” Carie said, but
she didn’t stand up right away.
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I can help you. I just don’t understand something.”
“What?”
“Well,” I said, leaning forward again,
“on the one hand, this guy is stalking you, you’re afraid of him, even think
he’s capable of tipping over and killing you.
But on the other hand, you don’t want anything bad to happen to
him. I don’t get it.”
“I never said I didn’t want anything
bad to happen,” she said, her voice a little wounded. “I just don’t want to see him go to jail.”
I considered that. “So you don’t want to press formal charges?”
“Does that mean criminal?”
I gave her a short nod.
“Then no. But can you still do something?
Maybe informally?”
I thought about that. Before I could wrap my mind around it, she
said, “Please?” I looked into her eyes
and had no choice but to say yes.
She smiled, relief and joy radiated
from her face. “Thank you,” she said
and this time the tears did fall, two of them.
She wiped them away self-consciously and stood.
“I have to get back to work,” she said.
“Wait,” I said, not wanting her to
go. “There’s a lot we still have to go
over. I don’t even know who the officer
is. I have to arrange to pick up your
answering machine tapes, and we have to discuss—”
“Tomorrow,” she whispered. “I’ll come back tomorrow.”
And she was gone.
That night I sat next to Marianne on
the couch, a comfortable distance between us, and watched a re-run of Little House on the Prairie. She sat with rapt attention, laughing and
crying in all the right places, but the episode was one of the later ones where
Laura Ingalls is all grown up and married, so it didn’t hold much appeal for
me. I stared at the flickering light of
the television screen and thought of her instead.
She came the next day, true to her
word.
I had only one appointment scheduled and that was at 0700
hours. It was an interview with a south
side officer regarding my suspicions that another patrolman was sleeping with
one of the prostitutes from out on East Sprague. The suspect, Officer Hiero, was already a black sheep to begin
with. Only two years ago, his partner
had been shot and killed on a traffic stop.
The passenger of the suspect vehicle had run from the car and Hiero had
chased him, even though that was clearly against department policy and
training. While he was off chasing
someone he had no legal right to detain, his partner, James Kahn, tried to take
the driver into custody. The driver
somehow managed to pull out a small caliber handgun and kill Kahn. Shot him right through the eye, as a matter
of fact. By the time Hiero returned to
the scene, empty-handed, the car was gone and so was the shooter. The car ended up having a stolen license
plate and no real evidence was found at the scene, even though forensics tried
everything. They even tried to get
fingerprints from Kahn’s uniform.
Nothing worked and neither suspect was ever apprehended.
That began Hiero’s tumble into the abyss. He took his lumps for his actions that day
(three days off for policy violation, pretty light in my mind), but his work
product suffered and his sergeant had constant, minor discipline issues with
him. I’d heard his wife left him and
took him pretty hard in the divorce, so he was living downtown in an apartment
building that police respond to regularly on calls-for-service. Truth be told, I fully expected to be
investigating him for some kind of graft or theft, given his money situation,
but what came to light was this thing with some prostitute.
Officer Jack Willow had about ten years on and worked in Hiero’s
platoon on graveyard shift. He seemed
like a decent enough officer, but that might have been because he had one of
those faces that was perpetually young.
I knew he took some ribbing as a rookie for being baby-faced and when
that feature didn’t change, the teasing continued.
I tried to remember if I’d heard anything negative from my
stoolies about Willow, but drew a
blank. I hoped it was only because
there wasn’t anything to recall and not because flashes of Carie’s eyes and the
swell of her breasts kept intruding on my thought process.
I’d read Willow
his administrative rights and gone through my broad questions with him. Those were the ones designed to see if
something else popped up outside the scope of this investigation. Sometimes a guilty conscience showed through
when I asked vague questions and an answer like “is this about such and such”
would come where such and such had nothing at all to do with the case at
hand. Then I’d have a whole new lead to
investigate. It worked more with the
younger officers and those just about to retire than with the ones around Willow’s
tenure, though.
Willow answered
all my questions directly and immediately and nothing suspicious came up. He admitted that Hiero made a lot of
prostitute contacts but said that was “his thing.” Hiero wrote a lot of FIs and kept tabs on the whore trade out on
the East Sprague corridor, and frankly, at least according to Willow,
the guys on the platoon appreciated that.
It freed them up to chase burglars and dopers.
The whole time I was asking questions and Willow
was answering, it felt to me like I was sitting in the next room, overhearing
the entire exchange while working on something else. Something more important.
In the end, Willow
gave me nothing I didn’t already have and may have even served to exonerate
Hiero just a little. I was starting not
to care, anyway. Let Hiero talk to the
hookers all he wanted. Even flirt with
them if he wanted.
I had bigger fish to fry.
It was two hours later when she buzzed the door.
“Lieutenant?” came her hesitant, needy voice and my breath
quickened.
I buzzed her in without answering and she made her way to
my desk. She was smiling ambiguously,
as if she wasn’t sure if it was all right to smile or not.
When she sat down, I wasted no time. “I need to know who the officer is that is
stalking you.”
Her smile faded and she gave a small shake of her
head. “I don’t want him to get in
trouble. I just want him to stop what
he’s doing.”
“I can’t stop him if I don’t know who he is,” I said,
trying to keep the frustration out my voice.
“I’m not even sure if he’s a city officer or not. He could be a county deputy.”
She took a deep breath and let it, slow and wavering. “What if you watch out for me?”
“What do you mean?”
“What if you watch out for me? Like, stakeout my house or something. If you catch him doing it, then I wouldn’t feel so bad.”
I shook my head.
“This guy is stalking you. Just
tell me who he is.”
She ignored my statement.
“He said he’d deny the whole thing if I ever told anyone. That’s another reason why…why I want you to
see it.”
“Just give me his name.”
“No. Not yet. I might…might be over-reacting. And he might have a family. I don’t want to be responsible for ruining
his life.” Her eyes frantically scanned
my office.
“Carie,” I said, leaning forward and catching her eye. “If he’s stalking you, he’s ruining your
life right now, isn’t he?”
She shrugged and looked away. She started to say something but stopped. I thought I knew what it was she wanted to
say, though.
I don’t matter.
But you do! I wanted to yell at her.
I knew that would only make it worse, that it would push her away, so I
said nothing.
We sat in silence.
Finally, I asked her, “You’re the victim here. How do you want to proceed?”
She looked up, her doe eyes radiating fear, panic and
seduction. “Would you…just watch my
house a little? It’d make me feel
safe.”
“Okay. But only if
you’ll do two things for me.” Of
course, I knew that I’d do what she asked anyway, but I had to try to help her
to help herself.
“What things?”
“First, start saving the phone messages that come in. Do you have an answering machine that using
tape?”
She shook her head.
“No. It’s digital.”
I opened my desk and took out one of the small dictation
recorders I had in the bottom drawer, along with a new mini-cassette and handed
them to her.
“Record them onto this tape. Make sure you include the time and date stamp if the answering
machine has one. Otherwise, just say
what the time and date of the message is before pushing the play button on the
answering machine.”
She nodded and held the mine-recorder to her body, nestled
beneath her breasts. “What’s the second
thing?”
“Call me,” I said.
Her eyebrows raised questioningly.
“If he shows up outside your house or outside your office,
then call me,” I explained. “I’ll be
there as quickly as I can.”
She nodded. “Okay,
I will.”
“That’s if he’s just watching you. If anything else happens, you call 911 right
away and report a DV stalking.”
Her face pinched and she gave a small shake, “I don’t want
to get—”
“Carie, if he tries to break into your house or attack you,
it has gone beyond what you’re talking about.
At that point, it’s gone too far and the police need to become
involved.” I stared hard at her. “Your safety is the number one concern
here.”
The tears appeared in her eyes again, but she wiped them
away before they could tumble down her cheeks, nodding as she did so. “Thank you,” she whispered, and stood up.
“I’d like to get some more information,” I said, but I kept
my voice soft so that she didn’t cry anymore.
“I’m just on a break,” she said, “and I have to work
through lunch today.”
“Okay.”
“I can…I can come back tomorrow, if you want.” She looked
at me, and then looked away quickly.
“I do,” I said. “In
the meantime, call if he comes near you.
And tape the phone messages.”
She walked toward the door. I rose and walked with her.
As we approached the door, she stopped suddenly and turned into me. Her arms wrapped around me before I could
even think and she squeezed me tight.
She buried her face in my neck and her breasts flattened against my
body. I could feel her heat and her
smell was intoxicating. I was
immediately hard.
“Thank you,” she whispered, but her voice had a husky rasp
to it.
My arms, which had opened up in surprise when she latched
onto me, slid around her shoulders with a mind of their own. I gave her shoulder blade a small rub and
then patted it. “It’ll be all right,” I
whispered back, wondering if she could feel my erection against her belly.
She nodded, not releasing me from her clutching
embrace. “I know,” she whispered.
We stood there for what could have been ten seconds or ten
hours before she pulled away, whispered, “thanks” and slipped out the door.
That night, after watching a re-run of Touched By An Angel, I tried to make love to Marianne, but she
whispered that she was tired and “on my special time.” She pushed my hands away and gave me her
back. Five minutes later, she was asleep
and snoring lightly.
I lay next to her, my cock so hard that it hurt and I
thought about masturbating for the first time in decades. But I didn’t want to debase myself, and
besides, this erection belonged to someone else.
Sleep came.
Eventually.
“No calls?”
She shook her head.
“Is that normal?”
She shrugged.
“Sometimes he goes a day or two.
I think it’s when he’s mad at me.”
“Carie,” I said, “what color uniform does this officer
wear? Is it green or blue?”
She squirmed, avoiding my gaze. “Blue,” she said finally.
That meant he was a city officer. That at least told me that I had jurisdiction, and I was glad for
that. If it had been a deputy, I would
have had to call their IA office and turn over the investigation to them. I didn’t want to do that. For one, they are a bunch of good old boys
over there and the IA office should be called the “cover it up and make it go
away” office. And secondly…there was
her.
“Have you watched my house?” she asked.
I had. I’d sat up
the street from her small house for an hour that morning and seen nothing other
than her leaving for work. She’d worn a
long gray blouse over the top of a gray skirt.
The skirt was tight and I’d admired the curve of her hips from my car as
she walked to her car in the morning light.
“Yeah,” I answered, “but I didn’t see anything.”
She smiled, but said nothing.
“What are you smiling about?”
She shook her head.
“I’ll tell you later.”
“Tell me now,” I said lightly.
“Nope.” She stood
up and moved to the middle of the room.
“I want to show you something, though.”
“What?”
She motioned to me to join her.
I stood and walked to her, curious and a little
excited. “What?”
She pressed her lips together and swallowed. Her exhale had a catch in it. “I…want to show what he did to me the last
time we were together.”
My mind raced and I immediately pictured her naked, with
sweat on her upper lip and her eyes half-open.
“What did he do?” I asked, my voice breaking.
She reached out with her right hand and grasped my throat
softly.
My eyes widened.
She gave a slow nod.
“That’s not all,” she said, and then reached out with her left and tried
to grab onto the hair at base of my neck.
The short hairs weren’t long enough to grip, but they bristled under her
fingers. She settled for laying her
palm across my neck.
“Did he hurt you?” I croaked.
“A little.”
“That’s assault,” I whispered. “We can’t let that stand.
We have to—”
“He told me to try to get away,” she said, her voice like
velvet. “But I couldn’t break his
grip. I felt that if I could, I could
escape him completely.”
I swallowed. Her
fingers remained firmly on my throat, each fingertip a point of fire. The hand on my neck stroked my skin lightly.
“How would you get out of this hold, Alan?” she asked me,
her eyes boring into mine, full of need and seduction and crisis.
“I…wouldn’t want to,” I admitted in a whisper.
She nodded her head and I found myself nodding mine. Her right hand slid away from my throat and
rested on my chest. Her nails bit into
me through my uniform shirt. She drew
my head forward and stepped closer to me.
The heat of her body enveloped me as her breasts pressed into my
body. The invitation in her eyes was
unmistakable. It was a hungry look, a
look of deep need. Her hand slipped
around to the small of my back and then my mouth was on hers, kissing her
deeply, ferociously, feeling the fire whipping through our lips and probing
tongues. I drew air in through my
nostrils in deep gusts, my heart pounding and my legs quivering.
A moan escaped her mouth and I captured it in mine. Her nails raked up and down my back.
“Oh, God,” she said in a pant, when I
broke away from her mouth and kissed her neck.
She gave soft moans, telling me how sensitive she was there. I could feel her whole body quivering as she
pressed it against me. “Oh, God, you
feel so good,” she said in my ear, her hot breath punctuating each word.
She pushed me back suddenly, her
strength surprising me. I staggered
backward into my desk, my arms still outstretched as if holding onto a ghost.
I looked at her in surprise and wonder. “Wha—?”
She smiled then, a savage smile that
had none of the weakness of prey that she’d shown before. This smile was triumphant.
She stepped toward me, unbuttoning her
blouse and letting it fall away. Her
bosom strained against the tan bra and she undid the clasp between them,
setting free the most beautiful pair of breasts I’d ever seen, or even
imagined. They dropped a fraction of an
inch when released from the bra and the way they hung and swayed when she
stepped in tight to me told me they were also perfectly natural.
She kissed me again, hard and quick,
then pulled her head back. Her breasts
ground into my chest. Her head drifted
down and in another moment she had my zipper open and pulled my cock out of my uniform
pants. Wet warmth surrounded it a
moment later and I let out a long, low groan.
She used her mouth expertly, almost as if she were kissing me down there
the way she’d kissed my mouth a few moments ago.
I ran my hands through her hair as her
head bobbed slowly below my belt. After
less than thirty seconds, I felt the back of my legs beginning to stiffen. I tried to will it down, tried to think of
the most sterile things I could, but the feel of her mouth and tongue swirling
around my cock and the soft feel of her hair was too great.
The orgasm welled up and washed over
me, forcing a series of short guttural yelps out of my throat. She didn’t stop or change her motion even
slightly, working her jaw and lips and mouth and tongue together and every
moment that I came was harder than the last.
When it ended, I sat gasping on the
edge of the desk. She sucked gently on
me for a few more long moments, just enough to feel good but not too hard to
overwhelm the tenderness. Then she slid
up my body again and put her forehead next to mine.
“Are you finished?” she asked me, her
voice brimming with passion.
My cock remained rock hard, showing no
sign of diminishing. I couldn’t speak so I shook my head.
“Good.” She hiked her skirt up above her waist and I saw that wore a
garter but no panties.
She kissed me again then, and I could
taste a tang in her mouth and knew it was me, but I didn’t care. I just wanted her again.
She pushed me back, until I was sitting
firmly on the desk. She straddled my
lap and guided me inside her. We both
moaned as I slipped deep into her. Her
warmth was even greater there than in her mouth.
Her lips and tongue sought out mine and
she began to rock ferociously, her heels wrapping around hooking into the small
of my back. A low moan began deep in
her throat and built slowly.
My
God, I thought. I am fucking a receptionist on the desk of
my office. What am I doing?
Then she came and I came again and for
a long time, maybe forever, I lost all sight of everything except her.
Afterward, she clung to me for a long
while, rocking gently. Her hands
caressed the back of my neck and she cooed softly with each exhale of
breath. I remained stock-still, taking
in the smell of her hair, her skin and our sex.
“Do you know what I was going to tell
you before?” she whispered.
“When?” I grunted.
“Before. When you asked me why I was smiling.”
“Mmmm,” I answered. “What?”
She smiled and I felt her cheeks rise
against mine. “I was going to tell you
that it made me feel safe to know that you were watching my house.” She gave me a hard squeeze with her arms,
her legs, and her whole body. “Very
safe.”
When she left that day, I sat and
thought about what had happened. I
tried to analyze it. I tried to deny
it. But mostly I tried to relive it and
found myself growing hard again.
Before I went home, I walked across the
cul-de-sac to the main building and took a shower in the locker room. There was always a hushing sound as I walked
past the officers changing their clothes.
Some gave me a practiced courtesy nod.
One or two flashed a look of contempt my way. Most, however, merely pretended I wasn’t there.
The shower was hot. I scrubbed myself from head to toe and stood
beneath the showerhead for a good long while.
When I left, I didn’t have any vestige of our encounter left on my body
and I was wearing a brand new uniform, but I felt anything but clean.
If Marianne noticed me wearing a fresh
uniform home, she didn’t mention it.
She knew I sometimes worked in the field, tailing officers. Surveillance sometimes led me to dirty
places.
We sat on the couch, an empty cushion
between us as we watched a re-run of Magnum,
P.I. I glanced over at her breasts
twice during the show and during a commercial; I almost leaned over and began
kissing her. But if she’d refused me, I
couldn’t have handled the unspent erection, so I did nothing. An hour later, when we went to bed, so did
she.
A week later, I asked her, “How did you
meet him?”
She was fixing her hair after slipping
the sweater over her head and ignored me for a moment. The scent of our sex hung in the air like an
exclamation mark melting into a period.
I repeated my question.
“I heard you,” she said. “Why do you ask? Are you jealous?”
I shook my head. “No,” I said, more harshly than I
intended. My jaw was clenched and I
forced myself to loosen it. “I just
wondered.”
“In the elevator, if you must know,”
she said.
“In this building?”
She nodded, distracted by her hair.
“Carie, how many days since he’s
called?”
A shadow fell over her face. She stood and smoothed her skirt with the
palms of her hands. I imagined doing
the same myself to her breasts.
“What is it?” I asked. “Has he called again?”
She nodded, her chin quivering. The fragile look was back in her eyes.
“Last night,” she muttered and looked
up at me. “You couldn’t tell by the way
I made love to you?”
I shook my head. “Baby,” I said, “you’re like a freight train
every time.”
A ghost of a smile crossed her lips and
was gone. “He called and said he
couldn’t live without me.”
My brow furrowed. “Did he sound…desperate?”
“Yes.”
“Suicidal?”
She shrugged.
“Carie, if he’s suicidal, you’ve got to
tell me who he is. Not only to keep him
from hurting himself, but for your safety, too. He’s got a gun. And if he
thinks he’s got nothing to lose—”
“How did you get this job?” she asked,
interrupting me with soft tones. She
finished with her hair and leaned into me.
Her breasts pressed lightly against my chest and her face was only a few
inches away.
Being interrupted has always bothered
me, even infuriated me, but with her, it was a kiss instead of a
handshake. She brushed away our entire conversation
that easily, with a single question.
“As a cop? I took the test and—”
“No,” she purred, leaning the rest of
the way into me and kissing my neck.
“The job here. In this office.”
I thought about how to answer that
one. There were a dozen answers, but
none of them told the complete story.
Not about the troubles I had on patrol, the hatred I engendered by
having standards that men did not want to meet, the insubordinance I faced
every shift, the fact that by the end of my tour in patrol, I was essentially
spending most of my time fielding complaints from citizens anyway because the
troops had stopped listening to me. I
couldn’t tell her that, any more than I could tell her that the Chief told me
the troops needed a fresh face and that they’d lost respect for me because of
some of my decisions. I couldn’t tell
her how much I hated them and hated him for kow-towing to them simply because
they were the rank and file majority. A
leader doesn’t conform to his men. He
forces the men to conform to him. That
is leadership. But I couldn’t tell her
that. And surprisingly enough, I
couldn’t bring myself to tell her how great her nipples felt when they were
against my tongue or how I was already growing hard and wanting her again and
again…
I flailed around inside my head for a while, thinking of
which inadequate answer to use while her warmth breath plumed out onto my neck.
Finally, I said, “I guess I was just
the best man for the job.”
It came out sounding lame, but she let
out a satisfied sigh as soon as I said it.
“In more ways than one,” she said, and suddenly it was okay.
Her hand traced the line of my jaw and
stopped at my chin. “Will you make love
to me at my house? In my bed, Alan?”
A little bit at a time, I started to
solve her mystery. He called a few
times a week, sometimes lovelorn, sometimes angry and she said that she
recorded all of the calls. I asked her
to bring the tape in but she refused.
She still protected his identity and said she would until it became
necessary to stop. But he didn’t seem
to escalate and may even have begun to taper off a bit. She said she hadn’t seen him outside her
home or workplace in a while, so that was good news. Usually stalking cases get worse as time goes on, not better.
I wondered briefly if she were covering
for him because she was trapped somehow in an emotional cycle of violence that
the DV experts talk about. She might
even have renewed her relationship with him intermittently. I worried. But I staked out her house three nights in a
row and no one came or went. And on two
other nights, I was there, in her bed and no one came but us.
Marianne said nothing. Noticed nothing. She had her Avon to sell and her shows to watch, but for me,
every woman on the screen was Carie and even when all they were doing was
demonstrating how much stronger their brand of paper towel was than the other,
what I saw was her stripping off her blouse and stepping out of her skirt and I
sat on the couch with my ankle across my knee to camouflage my erection.
“He said he’ll leave his wife,” she
told me one morning.
I sat in my chair, exhausted. My pants were still bunched around my ankles
and my dress shirt unbuttoned. I was
wishing for gator-ade. And another
round of her.
“So he’s married,” I managed, my breath
short.
She shrugged. “Maybe. He actually just
said he’d leave ‘her.’ I guess it could
be a girlfriend.”
“Does that make you angry?” I asked,
pulling up my Dockers.
She gave another shrug. “So he lied. All men lie.”
“Not me,” I said, without thinking.
Her head turned toward me. “Really?
Then you go home and tell your wife all about these meetings we
have? You tell her about coming to my
house?”
I shook my head and buttoned my
shirt. “No. I lie about that.”
“What do you say?” Her voice was sharp.
“Nothing at all. Or that I have to work.” I tucked in my shirt and buckled my
pants. “She doesn’t ask much.”
Her lip quivered then and she stepped
quickly into my embrace. “Oh, Alan, I’m
sorry.”
I shushed her, stroked her hair and
then had her again there on the floor.
My investigations, except for Carie’s,
had begun to slow down. I disguised the
slow-down as best I could and the Chief didn’t ask questions anyway. He was busy with budget issues and a new
mayor and no major citizen complaints came forward. I let Hiero’s choice of flirtation partners slip into the wind
and hoped that the officer sleeping away his shifts under the freeway got
caught by a civilian but not shot. And
as far as the guy taking free meals went, the owner of the diner wasn’t
co-operating, so I let it go for now.
I focused on Carie.
“I have a strange question to ask,” she
said.
She was straddling me in my office
chair, my fading erection still inside her.
“What’s that?”
She didn’t answer, sucking slowly on my
earlobe and breathing her hot breath into my ear. After a few seconds of this, I was hard again. My hands had been resting on her naked hips
and now I pulled her tightly into me.
She chuckled in my ear, the confident
sound of a master. “Don’t you ever get
enough?”
“Not enough of you,” I gushed and
continued to rock her hips.
She pulled her face away from mine and
began rocking them on her own.
“Better?”
I didn’t know what was better, her
rocking hips or her at my ear, so I just smiled like an idiot.
After a while, her mouth found mine and
her tongue was on fire and it only took a few minutes before I came like a
demon.
Later, she asked her question.
“How’s the investigation coming along?”
My eyebrows shot up, surprised. I thought she was intimately aware of
exactly how it was going.
She must have read the surprise in my
face. “I told you it was a strange
question.”
“No,” I said, “not strange. I just thought you knew.”
She shook her head. “I don’t understand what it is that you do
exactly. I just know that…that you
protect me.”
I glanced at the clock. “Do you have to get back?”
“No.
I told Paulina that I had a doctor’s appointment.”
“More like an appointment to play
doctor,” I said.
She grinned, kissed me softly beneath
my nose and stood to get dressed. “What
about you? Don’t you have interviews?”
“I schedule them myself,” I answered,
not wanting to move. “Besides, it’s
been slow except for your situation.”
She stepped into her panties and then
her skirt. I watched her, feeling a
dull hardness working in my groin. She
glanced around the office, standing bare-breasted and perfect.
“Where’s my bra?” she asked.
“Sucked away to never-never land, I
hope,” I said, giving her a lusty stare.
“That way you can stay that way forever.”
She spotted her bra on top of a
bookcase and retrieved it. Before she
could put it on, I grabbed her around her tiny waist and pulled her onto my
lap. She gave a small, happy
squeal. “Alan!”
Even through her skirt, I felt how beautifully
formed her ass was. She ground it into
my crotch, feeling my hardness grow. I
buried my face in her breasts.
“You really can’t get enough!”
I made a guttural growl of agreement
and took her nipple in my mouth. She
enjoyed it for a few moments, then pushed my head away and stood up.
“Do you care about me, Alan?” she asked
suddenly. “Or is it just sex for
you?” Her eyes were fixed on me,
intense yet tentative.
I stood, pulling up my slacks. She watched me and said nothing as I buckled
my belt and took a step toward her. I
kissed her softly and slowly on the lips.
“I care,” I whispered.
How was I supposed to tell her that I
was so cock-crazy about her that I didn’t really know for sure?
Two days later, she asked to see the
file on her case.
It was against policy, but I couldn’t
think of a way to say no. We sat at my
desk, her on my lap and pored over the thin folder of information.
“There’s not much,” she said.
“You haven’t told me much,” I said,
tracing her bra-strap on her back with one finger. “Not that I can document.
Once the phone calls come in, they’ll be transcribed and that’ll fatten
up the file. And once I know who he is,
I’ll interview other—”
“Is this how the other files
look?” She asked. “This…thin?”
I shrugged. “I guess it depends on the case.”
“Can I see one?”
I paused. “That’s against policy,” I told her.
Hell, it was against the law, too. Not only could I get fired for it, I could
be charged with a misdemeanor. On top
of that, any officer in any of the files could sue me for civil rights
violations in federal court.
“So’s making love to your girlfriend in
your office,” she murmured, grinding her ass into my crotch.
“It’s illegal, too,” I said weakly.
She didn’t respond. I sat there with her on my lap, smelling her
hair and perfume and skin and the remains of our sex in the air. I lasted almost a minute before patting her
on the thigh and asking her to get up.
I almost pulled Hiero’s file, then
decided against it. Instead I grabbed
the files containing sleeping beauty and my free meal cop and waved her into
one of the interrogation rooms.
We sat and went through the files and I
explained to her how I investigated and why and she nestled herself next to me
while I spoke. We were halfway through
the second file when the air-phone beeped pleasantly.
My eyes flew open. Shit! I didn’t have anything scheduled.
I looked at her in a panic and put my
finger in front of my lips, shaking my head no.
She nodded.
I strode quickly into my office, casting
my eyes around for any evidence of her.
There was none that I could see, so I pushed the button.
“Lieutenant Hart,” I said in as even a
voice as I could muster.
“It’s Reott,” a gruff voice said.
Shit!
I thought again. The Captain of Patrol. What the
hell did he want?
I shouldn’t have answered the
door-beep. No one could get in except
the Chief. If I hadn’t panicked and
answered the goddamn door-beep, Captain Reott would have gone away and left me
a phone message.
There was nothing I could do now, I
realized, and buzzed him in.
Captain Reott strode in with a manila
envelope in his left hand and a scowl on his face. It was Reott that had bounced me out of patrol, I was pretty
sure. Him and Lt. Crimson had chatted
up the Chief enough to get it done, anyway.
“What the fuck is this, Alan?” Reott
said when he reached my desk.
For a frantic moment, I thought he met
the file on my desk, which was Carie’s case.
A shot of fear lanced through my chest and I wondered how he’d figured
it out. I’d been so careful…
“What’s what?” I asked, starting to
sweat and hating myself for it.
He dropped the manila envelope onto my
desk. “That,” he said, pointing his
finger.
I looked down at the envelope. Relief flooded my body and I took my time
opening it. Before I could pull the
papers out, Reott spoke again.
“Don’t bother,” he said. “I’ll tell you what it is. It’s a use of force investigation from the
brawl down at Seymour’s last
weekend.”
I pulled the papers out and saw that he
was right. “Okay,” I said. “So?”
“So?”
Reott leaned down and spoke through gritted teeth. “Alan, three people went to the hospital
because of actions our officers took.
Now, I read the police reports and I think their actions were completely
justified, but that didn’t stop those folks and several witnesses from
complaining to the shift sergeant. They
thought the force was excessive.”
“I know,” I said. “I read the report.”
“No shit,” Reott said. “Read it and sent it back for investigation
at shift level.”
I nodded. “That’s right.”
“Why?”
I paused, trying to think of a reason
besides the one hiding in the interrogation room. “I thought it was the most appropriate action,” I finally managed
to say.
“You thought that?” Reott snapped back,
not missing a beat. “Well, then you’ve
got shit for brains.”
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. Since when does a shift sergeant out in the
field have time to interview this many witnesses? Huh? When he’s got a platoon
to manage.”
“Complaint investigations are part of
their job,” I said.
“Yeah, part of it. But it’s all
of your job. Besides, the sergeant you
sent it back to was part of the use of force.
He sent one of the civilians to the hospital with his straight stick.” Reott leaned even closer, so close that I
could smell the remains of his lunch on his breath. “What I want to know, Al, is what’s got you so goddamn busy that
you can’t do your fucking job and conduct this investigation?”
I swallowed and willed myself not to
look toward the room Carie was in.
“Nothing,” I croaked. “I can do
it. I just thought—”
“I don’t give a fuck what you thought,”
Reott grumbled. “Just get this shit
done and forwarded to me by the end of the week.”
“That’s only three days!”
“You better move your ass and stop
fucking around, then, huh?” Reott
snapped. He turned around and stalked
out the door, slamming it behind him.
I sat at my desk, dumbfounded. There was no way I could finish an
investigation like that in just three days.
Hell, just getting witnesses to even call me back—
Carie poked her head out of the
interrogation room. “Is it okay?”
I nodded dumbly.
She walked to my desk, her gait
tentative. “Maybe I should go…?”
I didn’t want her to go, but I had to
get to work on this case. Reott
couldn’t stand me and if I didn’t at least have some significant progress by
his deadline, he would be in the Chief’s office about it.
“Yeah,” I said.
“I’m sorry if I got you in trouble,”
she said, looking down.
“You didn’t,” I told her. “But listen, this doesn’t change
anything. If he comes to your house or
to the office, you call me. Or 911, if
he seems dangerous.”
She nodded, still not looking at
me. Then she walked slowly toward the
large picture board I had on the wall.
Every officer is pictured there, even those who are serving
undercover. I used it for witnesses to
identify the officer they had an encounter with in case they didn’t get a name
or badge number. Or more likely, if the
officer refused to give it to them.
I watched her, my heart racing. She stopped in front and scanned the large
board for several moments. She cast a
glance at me over her shoulder, her eyes filled with that same vague panic I’d
seen before, and then she pointed at a picture.
I scrambled out of my chair and almost
fell down in my haste to reach her.
When I followed her finger to the name, I stared in disbelief.
“That one? Westboard?”
She nodded, her chin quivering. “Yes.
Matt Westboard. But I’m sure
he’ll deny it.”
I stared at the smiling photo and shook
my head. “Westboard? Are you sure?”
“Yes.”
I moved my finger to Officer Anthony
Giovanni. Even though he looked very
little like Westboard, he was an infamous womanizer. “You sure it’s not him?”
She looked confused, but glanced at
Giovanni’s picture anyway. “No.” She shook her head.
“How about him?” I pointed at Officer
Scott Frater, another notorious skirt-chaser.
“No,” she said and pointed again at
Westboard. “It’s him.”
“Okay,” I said, lowering my own
hand. “Okay.”
“Like I said, I’m sure he’ll deny
everything. He’s said as much.”
“They all deny,” I whispered. “All of them.”
She gave me a worried smile and then
brushed her lips against mine. Her
breasts did the same against my chest.
“I’ll check with you in the morning, baby,” she said in a soft voice and
whisked out of my office.
I plopped down into my chair, staring
at Westboard’s picture from across the room.
His four-by-three photo was blurry to me at that distance, but I didn’t
bother reaching for my reading glasses.
It didn’t matter.
How had I gotten to this point? How?
The answer to that one was easy. I’d followed my cock and it had sold me
out. That much I knew.
I also knew something about Matt
Westboard that few people on the department were aware of. It wasn’t that he tried to hide it, but he
kept it quiet.
He was as queer as a three-dollar bill.
I lost the rest of the day.
That night, I don’t remember what
mindless drivel Marianne and I watched on the TV. I sat a few inches closer to her and reached out and patted her
leg during a commercial. She took her
hand in mine and gave it a squeeze.
When the show came back on, I looked at
her. She was a plain woman and getting
old like me. She didn’t have the body
that Carie did and had never, ever
used it in some of the ways Carie did.
But Marianne was constant and she was comfortable.
I looked around my house as I turned
off all the lights and checked the doors before bed. I looked at all the things I’d acquired and wondered what it
would be like to lose them.
Then, in bed, I felt sure that Marianne
would have let me make love to her, but I felt too guilty to do it. Instead, I lay on my back and stared at the
ceiling and thought of the specific numbers of the department policies I’d
violated, then the state laws I’d broken and then I tried to remember the
sentencing guidelines in federal court for civil rights violations. I fell asleep before I could wonder what
kind of work I could do if it wasn’t police work.
“Fuck me!” she moaned with renewed frenzy,
“Fuck me, baby!”
I couldn’t face her that morning. I couldn’t look into those eyes any
more.
When she walked into my office and stepped out of her
one-piece dress to reveal nothing but a thong, I was ashamed at how quickly I
became hard. Before she could kiss me
or look at me with that vague panic melting into sexual power, I pulled her
close, spun her and bent her over my desk.
She yelped, but didn’t resist.
I ripped the thong panties off of her, tearing the material
and hurling it aside. I was only slightly more careful with my own clothes,
forcing them off my hips. And then I
slammed into her, not at all gently and began to fuck her over the top of my
desk.
My mind raced as we coupled. I wondered for the thousandth time why she’d lied, why she’d
chosen me. I tried to think of a way
out and none were attractive. Facing
the music wasn’t an option. I’d rather
get caught than do that. And I knew
breaking it off with her would never work.
I certainly couldn’t tell her the truth. That I knew she’d made the whole thing up.
She’sloca, man, Gilliam had warned Norris.
Crazy, he’d said.
A fucking loon.
Norris hadn’t thought so, but Gilliam knew. He’d seen her eyes and he’d known.
She’d fuck you
like a wildcat, maybe, but then she’d turn around and stab you in the face with
a kitchen knife.
I think Gilliam was right.
I couldn’t tell her the truth.
And I couldn’t break up with her.
She knew too much.
“Omigod, baby,” she panted. “Oh, oh, oohhhhh.”
I thought about killing her then, just for a few long
moments. Even as I buried myself to the
hilt inside her, I wondered whether I’d left any signs of my presence at her
house. If she kept a diary and if I was
mentioned in it. I wondered where I
could go to bury her body.
I felt tension rising deep in my bones and building toward
that one point, that one special place where I was slamming into her
wetness.
“Baby, baby,” she whispered and turned her face to the
side. I looked down to see that her lip
was sweaty and her eyes half-closed.
I couldn’t stop fucking her, not right then and probably
not ever. I was going to have keep on
going as far as she wanted to take it, until she got bored and moved on or
until we got caught or until I killed her.
I was fucking her, but I realized then that she was fucking
me, too. In more ways than one.
“Oh, God, Alan!” Her body contracted and her back
arched. I knew she was coming. She
pushed her ass back into me and that pressure and her body, her perfect body,
made me start to come, too.
She let out a small series of whimpers and I felt molten
lava spill from me and then collapsed on top of her, across my desk.
We lay there for a moment, my chin resting on her shoulder
and my eyes closed. After what could
have been a few minutes or even a few hours, she spoke.
“Will you stay the night with me?” Her voice was pitiful, yet still confident
in my answer.
I knew it wasn’t going to end there. Staying the night would become staying two
which would find its way to taking a trip together. I didn’t know where it would end, so I grunted out a neutral
sound.
She took my noise for acquiescence and after-glow and
smiled. Then she spoke again. This time, I was glad my face was hidden
from her and that my eyes were closed.
And even as she said the words, I wondered how long it would take before
she became bored with me or until we were caught. I wondered how long it would be before I spent some of my
weekends scouting the woods near Deer Park
or Mt.Joseph
for a dumpsite.
“I love you, Alan,” she breathed. “I’ll love you forever.”
Frank Zafiro's poetry and short stories have been published
by small press magazines and online at A Cruel World, Born Magazine and Ascent Aspirations Magazine.
Frank Zafiro
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