Cook
Moves On
Kenneth James Crist
Persephone
snorted, as she reached the top of the hill, then blew her hot breath out from her
mouth, making her lips vibrate. She was hot and tired and she could smell
water. She was carrying two people, neither of them particularly heavy, but she
was a rather smallish dapple-gray mare and the extra weight was beginning to
take its toll.
Ahead, there was a
small creek, and the cottonwoods would provide some shade. The man heeled her
lightly, urging her in that direction, roughly north and Perse picked her way down.
She had learned to avoid prairie dog holes and snakes and her owner let her find her own
way much of the time.
The second person
she carried was a blind woman they had picked up in Dodge City two days prior.
They had camped the night before and the man had hobbled the mare and let her graze,
but she hadn’t had enough water.
Minutes later, they
reached the stream and both riders dismounted. Perse wanted to get to the
water, but the man held her back long enough to slip on the hobbles. He didn’t
understand that she would never leave him. She was in love with him—as much as
an animal could love a human— and she would gladly die at his hand rather than
leave him. She was aware in a vague way that the relationship had changed somewhat,
now that the woman was with them.
The man walked her
carefully to the sweet, clear water and let her drink, watching her closely. He
would stop her soon and set her to grazing, not letting her drink too much.
Later, before they moved on, he would water her again.
After Perse was
grazing comfortably the man took the smallish, blonde woman off into a grove of
trees. There, he undressed her and they made love and when they were finished,
while he was still on top of her, he pressed his lips to each of her eyes, touching
the eyelids with his tongue, and when they got back up from their tryst, her sight was
restored. When they were dressed, he carefully wiped tears from her eyes and kissed her
again, relishing the taste of her mouth and also her salty tears.
“Why
did you blind me?” She asked, her voice breaking just a bit with her emotion.
“Most people never
think about their sight and what a blessing it is to see. You will always know,
for the rest of your life, how lucky you are to have the gift of sight. You’ll
appreciate it more. It’s good to know despair and then to be restored…”
“What’s
your name?” Her head was cocked to one side and for a moment he was reminded of
a small bird. Her rather sharp nose even sort of resembled a beak.
“I
told you that before we left Dodge. I expect you may have been addled somewhat over losin’
yer sight. It’s John Cook.”
“Where
do you come from, John Cook?”
“I’m
not sure. I remember living in lots of places, some back east, but I cannot remember my
own childhood, or my parents. Sometimes it’s as if I was just…born an adult.”
John Cook was not
his real name, but one he had chosen because it was short, just four letters to
surname and given name, easy to remember and just as easy for others to forget.
The woman, Madeline, was a prostitute he’d taken with him from a brothel in Dodge
City, Kansas. He was a man with no job, no discernable past and no foreseeable
future. He was just here, at any given time a presence to be reckoned with by
those who let greed and avarice and plain orneriness govern their lives. John Cook was
a Regulator, in every sense of the word, unconcerned with the laws of man or the lawlessness
he encountered all too often, but very concerned with right and wrong and justice on a
Biblical scale.
He carried a matched
pair of Colt dragoons, older, black-powder weapons, much heavier, clumsier and
primitive than later models, but they suited him and his methods. He wore them backwards
in matched holsters mounted on crossed belts. They were never out of his reach and always
fully loaded. In his saddlebags, he carried spare cylinders, also fully loaded, that could
be changed out in a few moments, should he come under sustained fire from an enemy. In
a saddle scabbard he carried a Henry lever-action rifle, for times when situations became
really serious.
In spite of the weaponry
and his attire, which consisted of black semi-formal clothing, John Cook was a
peaceable man. He never went looking for trouble, but it had a troubling way of
finding him. He had lost track of how many men he had killed and that fact in
no way grieved him any more than a more ordinary person would grieve over killing
rats.
“I think we’ll make camp
here tonight,” he told Madeline, “it’s as good a place as any and my horse
is tired. Carrying two people is tough on her.”
They built a small
fire, using dry sticks that would make little smoke. This was still territory
on which native tribes roamed—not all of them had been placed on reservations.
John Cook usually had little trouble with them. He had learned a number of
dialects and the mere fact he was willing to do that gained him some modicum of respect
in most encounters. He had much more trouble with white men.
They
cut up some bacon which in another day or so would go rancid anyway. They ate that along
with some hardtack biscuits and coffee. It was meager rations, but the best
they could do with what they had. Later, after the stars came out, they made
love again and then John Cook took Persephone back down to the water.
When he returned to their bedroll, Madeline
was asleep. He settled in and was just dropping off when he heard a sound that was very
familiar to him. It was sort of like the sound of trickling water and a hard wind combined.
He quickly got up and moved away, buckling on his guns and grabbing his hat. The sound
was not loud enough to spook his horse or to wake Madeline, but he knew well what it meant,
and he felt adrenaline begin to kick in.
A
hundred yards away, a shaft of cool blue light pulsed straight down from above. Its source
was too bright to look directly at. He hurried along as quickly as he could in
western riding boots combined with the aches and pains of an older man. When he
reached the blue light, he did not hesitate at all. He took off his hat and
stepped straight into the beam. He faded to transparency and the blue light snapped
off. The only sound then was crickets. Persephone had raised her head at the sound of the
beam and then continued grazing. She had seen it all before and she knew the man would
return, sometimes in minutes, often in mere seconds…
The
highway bustled with shiny automobiles, their lights bright in the darkness, a white river
flowing one way and a red river flowing the other. John Cook stood in a large
area that was painted with stripes and had a few of the metal machines parked
in it. He had moved forward and back in the timestream so many times, he had
learned to observe and learn without wasting time on curiosity.
While
he was being transported, he was given orders and now he acted quickly. From his
instructions, he knew it would be a near thing. He had been told of the
importance of saving one particular person, a girl who had already been killed
further down the time-stream. He had been inserted at just the right time to save
her.
He stepped off in the direction of the
brightly lighted convenience store across the street. He remembered to walk to the corner
and wait for the signal and then use the crosswalk. His attire caused a few heads to turn,
but not as many as might have been expected. He wasn’t sure of the date, but he knew
for sure the location. He was in Las Vegas, Nevada.
He
went directly to the front of the store and pushed open the door and stepped inside. His
advisor had told him there would be two of them and had given descriptions. It would
not have been necessary, he could see now. Both individuals were hooded and
masked and were none too clean. Everyone else in the store was lying on the
floor. The larger of the two was intent at that moment on intimidating the clerk,
yelling for him to open the safe. The smaller robber was more interested in a rather smallish
girl, who was sobbing on the floor. He was standing over her, a small black revolver in
his hand, practically drooling. John Cook had to admit, she was a cute gal. But he didn’t
have time to really check her out. It was time to go to work. He stepped to his left and
drew one of the Colts.
First things first,
he decided. He cocked the dragoon and fired a quick snap shot that caught the
robber at the counter at an angle, the heavy slug entering just below his right
shoulder blade and exiting to the left of his left nipple, taking out the heart
and both lungs, and knocking him off his feet and landing him in a rack of magazines.
He was dead before his blood soaked a current copy of something called “People.”
The
second thug froze for just an instant, trying to figure out where the shot had come from
and which way he should run. He fancied himself a lover, rather than a fighter
and he had only come along on this caper because his bro had made it sound so
easy. His hesitation gave John Cook plenty of time to cock the dragoon and
bring his sights to bear. The shot took the entire top off the second guy’s
head, a shower of blood and brains spattering everything within eight feet. It took the
thug a second and a half to fall to the floor. He landed half atop the girl he had been
dreaming about raping seconds before. Her sobbing turned to screaming in record time.
Problem
solved. John Cook stepped back out the door and walked unhurriedly to the alley just next
door. He walked into the alley and directly to the circle of blue light beaming
down. As he stepped into the beam, he holstered the Colt and removed his hat.
There was the usual jolt and feeling of falling and then crickets. Fifty feet
away, Persephone had stopped grazing and was standing, her knees locked, sound
asleep.
In Las Vegas, a
hundred and two years later, detectives would work a double homicide of two gangbangers
who were killed while robbing a 7-11 store by an unknown man in a cowboy suit, armed with
black powder pistols. Several descriptions came in from witnesses who had seen him just
before the shit went down, but no leads were ever developed, and the Las Vegas dicks didn’t
put a shitload of effort into it anyway. They figured two less thugs pulling robberies
was a good deal and they moved on to more current crimes with better “solvability
factors…”
John Cook changed
out the cylinder in his recently-fired Dragoon. He would reload the two fired
chambers later when convenient. He slid in next to Madeline and was asleep in minutes.
# # #
They
left early in the morning before sunup and had made seven or eight miles, when Perse lifted
her head and chuffed. She was ready to whinny and the man knew it and said, “Silencio,
por favor…” He seldom spoke Spanish to her, but when he did, she knew he
was serious and besides, she could smell the tension in him. She could also
smell other horses.
The man guided her
off to their right and toward a small stream where there were some willows that
would give some concealment. He moved Perse down into the creek and the
coolness of the water felt good on her feet. He had the woman dismount and he gave
her one of his revolvers and sent her further north, telling her to keep low and if he
was killed, she should hide. He didn’t need to tell her what the gun was for.
Soon a single rider came into view, riding
one horse and leading another. The rider was an Indian brave who looked to be about twenty-eight
to thirty years old. The man stayed hidden, but the warrior continued his approach, holding
his hands out to show they were empty. Finally, he stopped directly in front of the spot
where Perse and John Cook were concealed.
He
quietly spoke from his mounted position. “Hau, white man.”
John Cook stepped farther up the bank
and said, “What do you want?”
“You need horse? For
woman?”
“I’ll
not trade the woman, no.”
“White man…you need horse
for her to ride.”
“What do you want?”
“You have wit-ski?”
“Whiskey?
Yes, I have some…”
“You
have wit-ski, I have horse.”
“Where
did you get that horse?” John Cook was looking it over closely. It was nothing special.
Not an Indian pony, but a well-used nag, what was commonly called a bucket-head. It
wasn’t much but it would do…
“Got
horse from white man,” the brave said, noncommittally.
“Did
you kill a white man for it?” John Cook’s revolver was in his hand, tucked
behind his back.
“No.
No kill. Count coup and take horse. White man too scared to fight.”
John Cook stepped over to Persephone
and opened a saddlebag and withdrew a bottle of rye whisky. It was cheap, rotgut stuff
he only carried in case of snakebite. So cheap it didn’t even bear a label. He stepped
up the bank and held out the bottle for the brave’s inspection.
“I taste,” the brave said,
and got down from his pony. He’d been fooled before by unscrupulous white men. Cook
handed over the bottle. The brave pulled the cork and smelled, then tasted the raw contents.
Satisfied, he corked the bottle and untied the second horse, handing the reins to Cook.
Cook stepped back and the brave mounted
and rode away, without another word. Cook whistled and a few moments later, Madeline appeared.
“We’ve got to move now. He’ll be back with more braves and try to kill
us. He knows now we’re alone. The trade was too easy. He’ll want to take back
the horse and whatever else we have. And he’ll want to take you, too.” He helped
her up onto the other horse, which had no saddle and they headed out, moving on north at
a quick pace.
Perse was glad to
carry only John Cook, but she could feel and smell his tension. She knew the
incident was not over.
They rode on
northward until dark, John Cook keeping an eye out, looking back often and
checking their flanks. After dark, he found a place not far from water and there
were two huge fallen cottonwood trees. Cottonwoods were not good for lumber or much else,
he reflected, but they would stop bullets. He put the horses in between the fallen trees
and gave Madeline a revolver. He got out his rifle and told her, “Don’t trust
your hearing. They’re very quiet and stealthy. Anything you see, if it doesn’t
call you by name, shoot it.” He then slipped away into the dark. For her own safety,
Madeline stood between the horses. Her eyesight had actually improved since Cook had blinded
her, then restored her sight.
An
hour went by and then the moon came up, its orange orb lighting the area quite clearly.
Minutes later, Madeline heard a bird call, then another. She was not fooled. This was
the Kansas prairie. Birds didn’t have shit to say after dark. The brave and his
friends were moving in.
She
saw the first brave, on foot, as he moved across the moon. A classic mistake, perhaps meant
to cause her to shoot and give away her position. In a second, there was the
crack of a rifle shot and a breathy scream as the brave went down. Then, a
second shot whizzed by her head and thudded into the body of another brave, one
she had not seen or heard approaching. It was at that point Madeline realized Cook
was using her and the horses for bait.
She dropped down to
her knees and cocked the huge, clumsy revolver. Two more shots and more cries
as more braves went down. Then, an arm slid around her from behind, a hand
caressed her breast and then moved to her mouth to keep her still.
Casually, almost without thinking, she
brought the revolver up under the brave’s chin and squeezed the trigger. The shot
deafened her for a moment and a splash of blood and brains soiled her hair and dress. The
man fell behind her and she scuttled away into the dark. The horses were agitated by the
gunfire, and she narrowly missed getting stepped on.
“Madeline!
Coming in!” Cook eased up to her in the dark and she could also hear the gallop of
hooves moving rapidly away.
“Is
it over?” There was a shuddery quality to her voice.
“Maybe,”
Cook said, “but we’d better move anyway.” They quickly watered the horses
from a small pool nearby and mounted back up. They rode for an hour, then stopped and bedded
down without making a fire.
They
awoke to gunfire off in the distance to the east. The shots rolled and echoed, the
concussions could be felt as well as heard.
“Stay
here. Keep that revolver ready. I’m going to check this out.” Cook mounted
Perse and moved off to the east. In about ten minutes there were two quick rifle shots
and soon he returned.
“Who
was that?” Madeline was merely curious, but Cook’s countenance was darker
than she’d ever seen him look.
“Buffalo
hunters. I took care of it.” Madeline was afraid to ask any more, but he continued.
“Stupid bastards shoot the buffalo and cut out the tongues and strip the hides.
They leave everything else to rot out in the sun. They get a whole dollar for a
hide. Sons of bitches…”
“John,
what did you do…?”
“Well.
They won’t be getting any more dollars…”
He shot her a ghastly smile and reloaded his rifle. “Let’s go. We’re
almost in Nebraska now. We’ll see the railroad tracks soon.”
Actually,
it was four more hours before they found a few buildings and a single railroad track
that was being built, as a rip-roaring railroad camp moved with it. They had
reached McCook, Nebraska. As they clopped along down the single mud street,
John Cook observed several women in less-than-decent attire, watching him. He
also noted that Madeline had seen them, too.
Well, he thought, the
railroad is here, the whisky is here and the whores are here. What more could a
railroad crew ask for?
The
local hotel was a two-story, clapboard affair, the siding already warping from the cheap
green lumber used to hastily knock it together. John purchased a room and it was none
too clean and sparsely furnished. Madeline opted for a bath and he left to get
their horses settled at the livery across the way.
As
soon as he walked the horses up in front the livery man stepped out and gave him the evil-eye.
He was a grizzled old fart in a sweat-stained plaid shirt and leather apron. He
was missing a few teeth, but that wasn’t uncommon.
“The
fuck you git that horse?”
“Which
horse would you be referring to, friend?” John Cook knew damned well which horse
the man was asking about.
“That
fuckin’ roan right there. Where’d ya git it?”
“Why would that concern you, Mister?”
Cook was getting irritated.
“Cuz I know’d the
got-damned owner, that’s why.”
“I
traded an Indian a bottle of whiskey for him, yesterday afternoon.”
“Man that owned that horse was
found dead day before yesterday on the tracks, ‘bout six mile up that way.”
He nodded toward the east and spat tobacco juice into the dust, narrowly missing Cook’s
boot.
“Don’t know anything
about that, friend. I told you where I got him.”
“Well…I’m
wonderin’ if you ain’t a got-damn liar.
And a horse thief…”
Cook’s
stare was now levelled at the livery owner like two gun barrels.
“Ya know what we do to horse thieves
around here?”
Cook’s Colt revolver
was suddenly in his hand, cocked and stuck under the man’s chin, pointed
roughly toward his Adam’s apple. “No, tell me, friend. What do you do to horse
thieves?”
The man’s voice
seemed to have suddenly left him and he stared into John Cook’s eyes. Cook
said, “I’m not a thief. Of any kind. And I don’t lie. Did the man leave a
widow?”
“Y-yes. Yes, he
did…”
“You’ll take the
horse then and sell it and give the money to his widow. I’ll buy another horse
from you, if you have stock to sell. Do we have a deal?”
“Yeah.
Yes. Yessir. We have a deal.” The Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. As quickly
as it had appeared, the Colt went back to sleep in its holster.
Cook handed over the reins of both horses
and said quietly, “Good. We’ll settle up in the morning then.”
The liveryman watched the smallish man stroll back across the street and
shivered slightly in the afternoon sun. He had felt a goose walk over his grave.
It’s
Out There…
Kenneth
James Crist
It
all started with bird feeders. And guilt. Squirrels came later, but not much later. They’re
opportunistic fuckers, squirrels. Later, I even had some turkeys. Yeah, really.
Wild turkeys, flyin’ right into my back yard to clean up what was left on the
ground. Five hens, two jakes and a big old tom. A jake? That’s what they call a
younger tom. They look just like a hen, but they have that beard thing hangin’
down…
The guilt? Well,
sometimes when ya get older, things you did thoughtlessly in your youth will
come back and start to bother ya. That’s the way it was with me. When I was
just a brat, growin’ up on the farm, kids all had BB guns. Then later on, we
all had rifles. Shotguns. And we hunted. Always ate what we killed, so that was alright.
Except for when we were little and got that first Daisy Red Ryder BB gun. Then we shot
at anything and everything. And there were a lot of birds around.
Sparrows,
starlings, crows, pigeons, I didn’t care. I shot ‘em all. Shot ‘em by
the goddamn truckload. Shot a lotta rats, too, but there’s no guilt there. Gotta
keep the rats down when you live on a farm. Otherwise, they’ll just about take over.
But the birds? Hell, they weren’t hurtin’ a damn thing. They were just targets.
Never thought shit about it at the time. They were just something to shoot.
Never thought about how they might have had nests, with babies they wouldn’t be
coming back to feed.
So, yeah, guilt. I
decided maybe I could adjust things a little, maybe swing the compass needle of
Karma a little more in my favor. So, I put out bird feeders and birdbaths in
the back yard. I’d get through a hundred and fifty pounds of seed a month. The
squirrels showed up right away. I didn’t try to run ‘em off, I just put the
food out and let nature take its course. Never thought much about what else I might
have been attractin’, either. That would come later.
I guess I fed
nature’s critters for a couple years before things started gettin’ a little
strange. And, at first, that’s all I could say. A little strange. Like in the
spring of this year, I had as many as eight or nine squirrels out there at a
time, quarreling over the sunflower seed. Then, within a week, there were none.
Didn’t see any for almost a month. At the time, I figured there was just too much
natural food out there and they’d be back when fall came and crops started dying
back and harvest was in. Now, I know better. Couple weeks ago, I started seeing squirrels
again, but they were not full-grown. They were the offspring of the adults I’d fed
before, most likely.
Then I started
seeing a lot less activity around the regular feeders, too. Instead of going through
two feeders full every day, suddenly it was down to one every three days. The birds were
a lot spookier, too. Time was I could sit out on the sunporch and watch them for hours.
Then, within a very short time period, they got weird. Now, if I so much as crack open
the screen door, they’re gone. I began to wonder what was going on. I made some assumptions,
based on ordinary logic.
I assumed, first of
all, that some predator was taking the squirrels and birds. I had seen nothing
to indicate this, other than the rapid decline in the population. I had seen no
hawks or any other predators hanging around in the daytime, so I had to conclude
something was happening at night. Being both curious and retired, I decided to find out
what was going on. After all, I had time on my hands. I went to a local sporting goods
store and bought myself a trail camera.
This
thing cost seventy-nine bucks and, for that price it was a bargain. It was battery powered
and fully automatic and it used an infrared flash. It would take decent
pictures in total darkness and record them on a computer chip, which could be
downloaded into my laptop. It came with various nylon straps and fittings, so
it could be fastened to a tree and left to do its thing.
There was a period
of about a month, when I got pictures of opossums and raccoons and the
occasional field rat, coming around to clean up what the birds and squirrels
had missed. And then, they too began to disappear. And, last Wednesday night, I got the
first hint of what I was dealing with.
There were three
shots in rapid sequence, I would assume as fast as the camera could cycle. In
the first, a raccoon is under the center of my three feeders, caught by the
camera with a handful of seed. It is also turning its head, and its mouth is open in
the beginning of a snarl. The second shot shows a blur of something moving with such speed
and agility that the lens and shutter speed cannot match it. There is the impression of
a rounded something, maybe an abdomen, maybe
not, and what could be legs…but if they are legs, there are way too many of them…and
in the last shot, both the raccoon and whatever got it are gone. Nothing to see here, folks,
just move along…
Thursday night,
nothing. Not a single frame of anything, weird or common. Friday night, ditto.
Last night, there was one shot, again, blurry and indistinct to be sure, but
still there and very close to the camera. So close, in fact, that only the shape of
something across the lens can be seen. It’s black and spindly and a bit shiny and
it looks like it has spiky hairs all over it. I know it can’t be what it appears
to be…but then the camera itself was smashed and chewed by something, its tough plastic
case split and ruined, the nylon straps torn like so much tissue paper. I managed to save
the memory chip.
So, this morning I
decided to just say the hell with this and leave. I live here alone, and it’s
twenty-two miles to town. I packed some stuff for hotel/motel survival and climbed
into my pickup, and of course it wouldn’t start. I picked up the hood and found that
something had stripped all the wiring out of the engine compartment. Having it rewired
would cost more than the old truck is worth.
I
went back to the house and picked up the phone, intending to call a friend, and it was
dead, too. Outside, the phone lines were ripped off the wall and mangled, just like
the trail camera. So, I can hike or I can stay and fight.
Like
I said, I live alone, and for that I am glad. I will face whatever it is, whenever it comes,
by myself. And it will come. Because it now knows that I am aware of it. And it
is hungry. Ever so hungry. I have weapons to defend myself and I am a good
shot. But I have seen its incredible speed and its power…and what if there’s
more than one?
It’s about forty
minutes past sunset and I have barricaded everything I can. The lights are all on
throughout the house but a few minutes ago, they flickered. I know it likes the darkness
and I’m really worried about the service entry cable from the pole to the house…
Hanging Out
Kenneth
James Crist
I
made a lot of mistakes with Janey. First of all, getting involved with someone so young
was not a smart thing to do. Not that she’s all that young, but I’m really
old. So, the age difference kinda doomed the relationship right from the start. That,
coupled with the fact that the whole thing was based on sex…well, you get the
picture.
Janey was always
promiscuous. I knew it when I met her. She’d been tending bar down at the Legion
post where I went all the time. Always getting hugs and kisses from every guy
came in. Probably why her husband, who was active-duty Marine Corps, finally
kicked her to the curb. I would imagine he caught her too many times. He’d go
on deployment and she’d be out…well, again, you get the picture. I was old
enough to be her grandfather and I kinda treated her that way. Let her move into my place.
Made sure she had a nice car and spending money. I could afford it, I retired well.
Treated
her good in bed, too. She said many times I was the best lover she ever had. Nothing like
many years of experience and knowing exactly what women like. There was nothing
I wouldn’t do for Janey, in bed and out. I figured she’d probably be my last
girl. Well, the last one that wasn’t a dried-up old hag, anyway.
So, we had a hell of
a party last night. Lotta friends over. Some of them mine, some of them hers.
Nice crowd. But I got tired early and I went to bed. I knew Janey would take care
of getting Ubers and cabs for the ones who were too wasted. And the house has two more
bedrooms for anybody who just couldn’t navigate at all. She’d lock up and set
the alarm and all that. And I figured when all that bullshit was over, she’d bring
her drunken ass to bed and probably wake me up for some nookie. That was the way it usually
worked with us. I’d be rested somewhat and she’d be drunk and horny. It usually made for some hot times between the sheets.
When
I got up this morning she wasn’t in bed. At least not with me. And when I walked
down the hall, the door to the center bedroom was open. Not just standing ajar, but wide
fucking open. I glanced in and there was Janey. In bed with Joey. Almost sounds
like it oughta be some kinda rhyme. Janey and Joey, sittin in a tree…F-U-C-K-I-N-G…First
comes love, then comes marriage, there goes Joey with a baby carriage. Well,
not fucking likely, I thought and went to the kitchen to make coffee.
Well, at least they weren’t
goin at it right then, I thought to myself as the coffee machine rumbled
and hissed and chuckled. That deed was already done, for sure. I took the first cup and
hit the shower. Made myself some breakfast. All the time I was scrambling eggs, I was wondering
how many times she’d done this shit before that I didn’t know about.
Then she finally got
up. Came to the kitchen all proper in her robe. Got her some coffee. All kinds
of apologies, tears and all that shit. We were keeping our voices down.
Fighting as quiet as church mice. Didn’t wanna wake up Joey, I guess. She tried
to kiss me a couple times, and I kept turning away. In spite of the coffee she was
drinking, I could smell her cock-breath and it was making me crazy.
Later,
Joey got up and wandered out, scratching his nuts through his skivvies. He looked around
some, but didn’t ask. Guess he was just gonna brazen it out. Asked me, “Hey,
is it okay if I grab a shower?”
“Sure.
Use the one in the south bathroom. North one’s not working right.”
He grabbed his
shower, then snagged a beer outta my fridge and left. Hair of the dog, I suppose.
It’s okay, though. I don’t blame Joey. Joey is mostly a dick leading a man
around. He most likely won’t be making any of my parties in the future, though. Damn,
I’d better hurry up.
Did I mention I’m a
retired cop? Oh, yeah. Twenty years and eleven months on the city P.D. You get
to know a lotta people in that amount of time. Judges. Attorneys. Hospital
folks. Other cops, of course.
Janey’s hanging out
in the north bathroom. When I was in there earlier, I’d grabbed her pantyhose
off the bar thing over the tub. Put them in my pocket. Didn’t really even know
why I did that at the time. Then, when she pushed my buttons one time too many,
I realized why they were in my pocket.
She’s
in there now with the door closed, hanging from the
curtain rod. This suicide note’s coming along nicely. But I need to get this wrapped
up. I’ve gotta tee time at Rolling Hills Country Club at one o’clock with Bill
Kravitz. Doctor William Kravitz. He’s the county medical examiner…known him
for fifteen years. Bill’s a good guy to know.
And
if I hurry, Dr. Bill will make a good alibi…