SK01 - Waist Deep (24 page)
“No,” LeMond answered
.
I glared at him, my nausea and anger brewing together into a growing fury.
I breathed deeply through my nose to quell the emotion, but it did little to stem the tide.
After a few m
oments, LeMond squirmed slightly
.
“She was a little upset about the play being cancelled,” he said.
I nodded, remembering our conversation at the school.
The principal had wanted a play with more act
ing roles
.
“How upset?”
He shrugged.
“Not so much that I ever thought she’d hurt herself.
Or run away like she did.”
I didn’t answer, considering the possibility.
She was
sixteen
years old and wanted to be a star.
Her big chance comes along and she works hard at it, only to see the opportunity jerked away.
How big of an event would that be in her life?
How devastating?
It made some sense.
It might be why she ran way.
It didn’t explain the jump to
flirting with
prostitution, but it explained the runaway.
“I care deeply for her,” LeMond was saying.
“I really do.
It wasn’t just sex for me.
And I tried to console her.
I held
her
while she cried and—”
My hand shot out and caught him behind the head.
I grabbed a fist full of his wet hair and twisted his head to the side.
LeMond yelped and I punched him hard in the face.
Once.
Any more than that and I wouldn’t have been able to stop.
I leaned in close to his face.
I hoped he could smell the onions and coffee on my breath from lunch.
A trickle of blood rolled out of his nostril and across his upper lip like a thin, red mustache.
“Your days of screwing your students are through,” I told him, my voice barely containing my fury.
“I catch even a whiff of it after tonight and I go to the police.
You get me?”
LeMond nodded, but there was not enoug
h fear in his eyes for my taste.
I snapped another punch into his delicate face.
I left him there, in his hot tub and bleeding from his nose, and stalked back to my car.
On my way
, my stomach clenched again. This time,
I let loose its contents, spewing puke all over the hood of LeMond’s Porsche.
4
2
The next morning, Cassie was back.
“Good morning,” she said, smiling her mysterious smile with that slightly crooked tooth just on the edge of it.
“Usual?”
“A double,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows lightly.
“Tough night?”
I nodded and grunted at the same time and she started to fix my Americano.
Peering over the side of LeMond’s fence had been tough.
So
was admitting that I liked
the sight of Yvette’s body and
then
hating myself for it.
Listening to LeMond’s ‘bullshit’ speech had been tough, too.
Same thing with talking to the son
of
a
bitch and then punching him only twice and not raining a hundred blows down on his smug, artistic face.
Very tough.
Of course, realizing that I hadn’t gained much from my little adventure at
Chéz
LeMond hadn’t been easy, either.
But stopping at the liquor store and buying a nice bottle of smooth, Tennessee whiskey?
Pouring glass after glass in my apartment?
Not tough at all.
Easy, in fact.
A shower and
a few
aspirin
put me back into the land of the living, just barely.
The coffee that Cassie slid across the counter to me would help me on that journey.
“A plain bagel, too, please,” I told her.
“Cream cheese?”
My stomach wavered.
“No, thanks.
Just plain.”
She nodded and grabbed one for me.
I paid her, tipping her a dollar.
She eyed the bill, a strange look on her face.
“I got some work,” I explained, stammering a little.
She nodded, but didn’t smile.
“Thanks.
Anything else I can get for you?”
I thought about asking her about that trip for ice cream we were supposed to make, but I knew that the time wasn’t right.
It was a coincidence, really, me having enough cash to give a decent tip coming at the same time we’d made our first tentative moves towards a real date.
But
now the simple gesture
had queered things up a little bit.
Best to let it ride itself out.
“No, that’s it.
Thanks.”
She nodded and gave me a smile sans the mystery to it and returned to work.
I grabbed a paper someone had left behind and read through the pages without really absorbing anything.
It was all the same, anyway.
The mayor and the city budget crisis.
The Flyers actually tied Trail 3-3 the previous night, I was glad to see.
Then I read a little further and discovered that they gave up two third period goals.
That made it a bad tie, in hockey parlance.
I flipped to the comics.
By the time Adam arrived, I’d finished half of the crossword.
I pushed the paper aside as he sat down excitedly.
Cassie took his order and he fidgeted in his seat while she made the latté.
“Good news?” I asked.
He nodded and slid a manila folder across the table to me.
I opened it up, holding it close to my body so Cassie couldn’t see the contents when she brought Adam his drink.
There were three pieces of paper inside.
The first one was the glamour photo of Kris I’d given Adam.
The second was a printed Internet page.
The logo across the top read, “Barely Legal Beaver!”
A naked woman was featured, lounging on a pillow, her back arched and her legs open.
Large red stars covered her nipples and pubic
region
.
It was Kris.
I glanced up at Adam and he nodded for me to keep reading.
At the bottom of the page, there was an invitation to come inside for just $3.95 a week and watch all sorts of sexual escapades by these barely legal girls.
My eyes flitted over the descriptions of every sex act imaginable to the end of the tag
line, where the viewer was invited to “Cum see Star in her debut film!
See a virgin becum a slut right before your eyes!”
I closed the folder and took a deep breath.
Jesus.
She was
sixteen
.
Sixteen
!
I closed my eyes and forced the images from inside the folder from my mind.
I tried to see Kris dressed in a nice yellow dress, playing croquet on the lawn with her father.
Adam leaned in.
“I have to report this.
I’ll turn it in this afternoon.
It’ll probably sit overnight.
I doubt
L
ieutenant
Crawford will read any reports that come in at the end of the day.
If he doesn’t read it
until tomorrow and then
decide
s
to do something, you’ll have a one-day head start.”
I nodded.
“If he spots the report and goes off on a tangent, then they’ll hit the place as soon as possible.”
He shrugged.
“Best that I can do.”
“Thanks,” I managed.
His face lit up.
“You should have seen it, Stef.
I don’t know what they’re hooked up to, but my search speed tripled, maybe quadrupled.
And their decryption software broke through firewalls like
tissue paper
.
It was incredible.”
I nodded and
opened the folder again. I turned
to the third and final page.
There was a name, a photocopy of a driver’s license and a single entry for a traffic ticket in the local computer all cut and pasted onto the same page.
“This him?” I asked Adam.
“Yeah.
That’s who the ISP comes back to.
I don’t know if he’s the one making the movies, but he’s the one putting them on the ‘net.”
Adam shook his head.
“I’ll never say impossible again.
If I do, slap me.”
He took a satisfied drink of his latté.
I ignored him and read the address on the driver’s license and looked up at the face.
“Make sure you shred that when you’re through with it,” Adam said.
I nodded absently and read the name slowly to myself.
Roger
.
Roger
Jackson
.
4
3
I stopped at my apartment and went inside.
It smelled stuffy, so I threw open the window and let the cold February air flood in.
The bottle of whisky stood on the counter, still one-third full.
I reached for it, and for one wavering moment, I almost poured three fingers into last night’s glass.
Hair of the dog.
Instead, I unscrewed the cap and poured the brown poison down the drain
. I
threw the bottle into the garbage pail.
Then I closed the window.
From under my bed, I drew out the most expensive thing I owned
. It was
the last holdover from when I was on the job
.
A
Smith and Wesson .45 caliber Model 457 with a barrel just shy of four inches long for easier concealment.
Seven rounds plus one in the pipe.
I slipped the gun out of the soft leather holster and pulled the slide partway open.
There was a gleam of gold in the chamber.
I let the slide snap forward.
Then I clipped the holster to my belt, covered it with my windbreaker and left the apartment.