Jonathon King - A Killing Night

She heard the leather of the gun belt creak and then drop to the ground. He pushed himself against her and she let him take her on the back bumper. She picked a spot out in the darkness and focused on it, watched it, wished she was in it. Was this her fault? she thought. Did I do this to myself again?

When he was finished he backed off and she started to relax. She could take this. She could get through this, she thought.

But then he held her by the shoulders and turned her and pushed her chest down on the trunk of the car and she let him take her again. She closed her eyes and silently vowed: Last Time.

On the ride back home he sipped at the flask and actually asked her if she had liked the movie. She forced herself to say yes, especially the part when the SWAT team came in and cleared out the room of foreign terrorists without firing a shot. He'd just nodded. She tried to concentrate on the moon and remembered a storybook from when she was a child about a boy with a purple crayon and how the moon walked with him.

When they got a block from her apartment he parked and got out and opened the door for her. She stepped out and then stood facing him, looking into his face, her eyes as dry as parchment.

"I gotta go. I'll call you," he said, and she nodded and he leaned down and kissed her on the forehead.

She watched him get back into the car and pull out onto the street and she stayed still until the red glow of the taillights disappeared around the corner. And then she turned and threw up into the gutter over and over and over until her throat was raw.

I walked into the bar late afternoon and the darkness and the odor of stale beer and a subtle hint of mildew stopped me. I took two steps in and waited until my eyes adjusted, pupils spiraling down from the brilliance of the sun outside.

There were three humped backs at the bar, men with their shoulders turned in as though the light that came through the door was a cold wind. There was a blonde head moving beyond them. Her hair was pulled back tight. Marci, working the day shift just as Laurie had told me over the phone. The manager had offered quickly that the girl had just asked to switch her shifts and get off the eight-to- two for a few weeks. Laurie became even more suspicious when I said I needed to talk with the girl and would rather do it in private.

"She came in with the strangest look. Said there was nothing wrong but I knew there was. Is she in some kind of trouble with the police?"

I told her again that I wasn't a cop and that I was only a consultant when detective Richards and I had met with her.

"But you didn't say that then, did you?" she reminded me.

I apologized for leading her on.

"It's OK," she said, brightly, like she meant it. "You get used to liars in this business."

I let the dig sit.

"So can I talk with Marci?" I asked.

"You don't need my permission. She's on four-to-eight all this week."

I made my way down the bar and took the end seat on purpose. I had called Richards the same day I'd given her the picture. I knew she would look up his name. Pissed as she was, she was too good a cop to turn away from it. What I was surprised at was that she gave me the rundown. Maybe it was in the form of an apology, maybe she was intrigued. It was hard to read her over the phone.

Kyle Morrison. Three years on the Fort Lauderdale Department. Came in from a small department in North Florida. Since he'd been here there were a handful of complaints in his file. Most of them gripes from arrestees about use of force, but not one that had stuck. Like most metropolitan departments, Fort Lauderdale had a strong union. They dealt with most complaints internally and even if they did think Morrison was heavy-handed, there wasn't much they would do unless he knocked around someone prominent and it went public. He was assigned to a night prowl car shift in the Victoria Park area. The only odd thing Richards said she noticed was that despite his experience Morrison had never taken the sergeant's exam. He seemed to be satisfied with what he had, which does not always endear you to the powers that be. Supervisors are wary of those who don't aspire to management like they did. It makes them second-guess themselves.

I complimented Richards on her thoroughness and her sources.

"I'm sorry for this morning, Freeman," she'd said and hung up.

Marci looked twice at me when I sat down and then she reached into the cooler. She brought out a Rolling Rock and pried the cap off.

"Hi," she said when she put the bottle in front of me and then stood back, waiting.

"How you doing?" I said, my tone conversational.

She stared at my face a couple of moments too long. Her eyes had a color like rainwater on a concrete slab and had about the same amount of emotion in them. She looked older than the last time, and not just by days.

"You on the job?" she said, like an accusation.

I took a sip of beer and couldn't hold her look.

"Used to be. Now I'm working as a private investigator," I said.

The other men at the bar were too far down the rail to hear me. I had the feeling it was as intimate a setting as I was going to get with her.

"But you were with that cop the other day, the woman with the hair?"

"Yeah. She's looking into a case that I was trying to help her with."

"What kind of case?" she said, all subtlety gone from her voice. I had the feeling she'd given up on subtlety.

"The disappearance of some women," I said. "Women who were all bartenders."

She actually stepped back, though I was sure she was aware of it.

"From here?"

"One from here," I said. "The others from a couple of places in the area that are pretty much like this. Small bars. Relatively quiet. Regular customers."

"What happened to them?"

"No one has been able to find out," I said. "They never turned up. They just vanished. No notes. No argument with family. No damage to their apartments. It was almost like they went out on a date and never came back."

When I said it I watched her face. I thought she was looking at the mirror on the wall behind me but I could see a paleness spread down her face like the blood was sliding down out of her cheeks, leaking somewhere below her throat. She stumbled like she'd suddenly fallen off a pair of high heels and I came off the stool and reached out for her.

She put up her palm.

"Don't touch me," she said, regained her balance and then turned and poured herself a shot of brandy from the back of the bar. When she tossed it back one of the boys down the way picked up on the movement and raised his tumbler of dark liquid.

"Cheers," he croaked in a raspy voice, downed the drink and went back to studying the wood grain on the bar top.

I waited for a hint of color to come back into her skin but I wasn't going to waste my advantage.

"You know a guy named Morrison, Marci? A Kyle Morrison?"

"Yeah," she said and I could see a flicker of fear in her eyes. "Why? Does he have anything to do with this?"

"It's possible," I said, using the fear. "How well do you know him?"

Now she was looking down into her empty shot glass.

"Maybe not as well as I should, huh?" She motioned for me to take a stool down around the corner of the bar, behind the electronic poker machine, and we talked for an hour, breaking on occasion so she could tend to the others when they tapped their glasses on the African mahogany. At first she just listened while I described the cases that Richards thought were more than just disappearances. I gave her the details about the girls, all from places far away with no local family connections and not a lot of close friends outside the bar business. They had all lived alone. They were all single. She waited until I'd given as much detail as I was going to give and then she poured herself another brandy.