Jackson Bell - Trigger Finger

I reached inside my London Fog overcoat and pulled out a sheet of paper—a photocopy of the membership card to Ryan’s—which I unfolded and displayed for the clerk. “You guys issue cards like this?”

“Yeah. That’s… who are you?”

“I’m Kevin Swanson,” I said. “I’m an attorney from Alamance County.” Seeing his face tighten up, I quickly added, “Nobody’s in trouble. I’m just looking for information on two guys who might have a connection to this card right here.”

“What two guys?”

“Leon Pinnix and Trayshaun Ramseur. Ring a bell?”

Cory shook his head.

“There’s two of them,” I said. “Cards, I mean. One for Pinnix and one for Ramseur. You mind checking your records and seeing if you have an address?”

“We don’t keep records,” he said. “People that come here don’t necessarily want a paper trail, you know? And even if we had records, I probably couldn’t show them to you. Privacy laws. Know what I’m saying?”

“I do,” I said. My face remained impassive, but inside I felt myself flailing. This was my one and only lead. This was the part of the show where I threatened to subpoena him to a deposition and threatened to force him to produce business records. But it had become very obvious to me—since I wasn’t dealing with Ryan himself here, or anybody else with skin in the game—that Cory wouldn’t give a rat’s ass if I subpoenaed the entire world. In fact, he might enjoy collecting his eight dollars an hour to come sit at a deposition.

“If you don’t mind me asking, what’d they do? I mean, what’s a lawyer from Alamance doing sniffing around a porn store?”

I folded the paper and slipped it back into my coat along with my hands.

“Last year, they tried to break into my house,” I said, maintaining my expression. “They tried to kill me but didn’t do a great job. So I shot and killed them.”

Cory’s thick eyebrows raised and brought the corners of his mouth up with them in a slight smile. “I thought you looked familiar. I saw you on the news, dude.”

“They didn’t have any ID,” I continued. “In fact, but for these cards to your store I don’t think the cops would have even known their names. I’m just trying to get more information. So I can get some… closure.”

“Closure,” he echoed.

“Closure,” I repeated.

His eyes moved over my overcoat, the suit visible beneath it. White shirt, dark tie. I read his mind; this guy killed somebody? You got to be fucking kidding me.

“The nature of the attack,” I said, “suggests that if they held memberships to a place like this—no offense—they would have come here a lot. They’d be regulars.”

“We have a lot of regulars.”

“Two black males, early to mid thirties.”

“Dude, this is Durham. You’re going to need more than that.”

“They would have been into alternative.”

Up climbed the eyebrows, slight but noticeable. “How alternative?”

“The cops found handcuffs and duct tape. Theory is, these guys were getting ready to act something out.”

Cory’s mouth transformed into an O and his eyebrows raised all the way. He whistled. “I see. That’s pretty alternative.”

“It is. Anyway, do these guys ring any kind of a bell? They wouldn’t necessarily have been coming in together—I’m looking for two black guys about my age who consistently rent… very alternative material. The most alternative material you have.”

He looked down at my hand, which still held the photocopies of the membership cards. He motioned for me to hand it over, which I did. He studied it for a moment and handed it back.

“That’s a VIP card,” he said. “Gives the customer access to certain collections. Material we don’t just put out there for everybody. Hey, are you a cop?”

“My State Bar number is 503612. Look me up.”

“If you’re a cop, you have to tell me. Otherwise, it’s entrapment.”

That wasn’t true, but I wasn’t going to disabuse him of that notion just now. “My firm’s website is www.carwoodallisonlaw.com,” I offered. “My mug shot’s on it. Fire up your laptop and take a look.”

He folded his arms and regarded me with eyes that narrowed in suspicious appraisal. Whirs and clicks sounded as he tried to decide whether I was telling the truth or not. After another look at my suit—one of my expensive ones, perfectly tailored to my figure—he must have decided that I dressed too nicely for an undercover cop. His arms unfolded. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the glowing red curtain behind him.

“Come on,” he said. “I’m going to show you the VIP section.”

I honestly didn’t want to see what kind of things the owners of a store like this considered too spicy to set out with the S&M and anal material. And I didn’t want to stand in that red light. I didn’t want that at all.

But I went.

Cory hadn’t answered my question. He hadn’t indicated whether Pinnix or Ramseur rang a bell.

Because they don’t , I thought. Because they weren’t born and didn’t grow up with sexual desires that could deform like the branches of some twisted tree in the black heart of the forest. They had no lives before the Bald Man gave them air. They had no thoughts other than his.

Impossible. The video store, these membership cards, they proved that. Golems didn’t like porn, because they couldn’t; ergo, the fact that Pinnix and Ramseur had possessed membership cards indicated that they weren’t golems at all and I needed to stop thinking that stupid bullshit right now.

Or not, Bobby mused. He conjured men, but maybe he can’t conjure clothes

What the hell are you talking about? I asked.

I’m saying that maybe the membership cards belong to the people they killed to get the wallets and clothes.

Before I could process that last thought, I had followed Cory through the curtain and found myself in the exclusive VIP section of Ryan’s News & Video.

The light burned dimmer in here, lengthening the shadows and removing the shine from the magazine and DVD covers. I didn’t get a great look at those, because the merchandise on the wall grabbed my attention first.

Chains. Rope. Rolls of tape. Blindfolds.

Handcuffs.

“Good material isn’t all about big titties and tight asses,” Cory said. “I mean, if that’s all it was, we could all get off on Playboy , you know what I’m saying? The good stuff is situational.”

Right next to the handcuffs hung a clear plastic package with what looked like garbage bag ties inside. A handwritten label on the bag proclaimed these to be FLEXICUFFS.

“The good stuff gets to the heart of what you want. Your center. Digs deep into those places that you don’t want to admit exist but are running things anyway. Under every skin is a nasty, nasty son of a bitch. This section is for him.”

I tore my eyes away from the restraints and found myself looking at a DVD showing a girl in what looked like an evening gown. She looked young, probably too young to have her face on a DVD cover in a place like this. The title read simply Prom Night. Next to that, another girl, blindfolded and gagged and chained to a wall. This one was called Please Don’t.

I felt my immortal soul in danger just by being here.

There was another doorway beyond the one I’d just stepped through. Solid metal, with a double lock, it looked like an exterior door. This, logic said, would lead to the outside of the building.

That part of me that believed in golems piped up again. No, it said, it doesn’t. It goes somewhere else.

The thought hit me like a bucket of ice water.