Faithless

CHAPTER SEVEN

Jeff rey kept the radio down low as he drove out of Heartsdale. He realized he had been gritting his teeth when a sharp pain shot up the side of his jaw. Jeffrey heard an old man’s sigh come from his chest, and felt like opening a vein. His shoulder hurt, and his right knee was acting up, not to mention his cut hand was still throbbing. Years of football had taught him to ignore aches and pains, but he had found as he got older that this was a harder trick to pull off. He felt really old today- not just old, but ancient. Getting shot in the shoulder a few months ago had been some kind of wake-up call that he wasn’t going to live forever. There had been a time when he could trot out onto the football field and practically break every bone in his body, only to wake up feeling fine the next day. Now his shoulder ached if he brushed his teeth too vigorously.

And now this hepatitis shit. Last week, when Jo had called to tell him, he had known it was her on the phone even before she said a word. She had a way of pausing before she spoke, hesitant, as if she was waiting for the other person to take the lead. That was one of the things he had liked about her, the fact that she let Jeffrey take charge. Jo refused to argue, and she had made an art out of being agreeable. There was something to be said for being with a woman who didn’t have to think through every damn thing that came out of her mouth.

At least he wasn’t going to be sleeping on the floor again tonight. He doubted Sara would welcome him into bed with open arms, but she appeared to be getting over some of her anger. Things had been going so well between them before Jo had called, and it was easy to blame someone else for his recent problems. The truth was that it was starting to seem like every day with Sara was one step forward and two steps back. The fact that he had asked her to marry him at least four times and each time been basically slapped in the face was beginning to grate as well. There was only so much he could take.

Jeffrey turned onto a gravel drive, thinking that between the farm and Dale Stanley’s place, his Town Car was going to look like it had been through a war zone.

Jeffrey parked behind what looked like a fully restored Dodge Dart. “Damn,” he whispered as he got out of his own car, unable to conceal his appreciation. The Dodge was cherry, dark blue with tinted windows, jacked up in the back. The bumper was seamless, bright chrome sparkling from the security light mounted to the garage.

“Hey, Chief.” An extremely tall, skinny man wearing work coveralls came out of the garage. He was rubbing his hands on a dirty towel. “I think I met you at the picnic last year.”

“Good to see you again, Dale.” There weren’t many men Jeffrey had to look up at, but Dale Stanley was practically a beanstalk. He looked a lot like his younger brother, if someone had grabbed Pat by the head and feet and stretched the young policeman a good twelve inches either way. Despite Dale’s towering height, there was an easygoing air about the man, as if nothing in the world bothered him. Jeffrey put his age at around thirty.

“Sorry I had to ask you to come so late,” Dale told him. “I didn’t want to upset the kids. They get nervous when a cop pulls up.” He glanced nervously back at the house. “I guess you know why.”

“I understand,” Jeffrey said, and Dale seemed to relax a bit. Patrolman Pat Stanley, Dale’s little brother, had been involved in a pretty intense hostage situation a few months ago, barely escaping with his life. Jeffrey couldn’t imagine what it was like to hear about something like that on the news, then wait for a police car to pull up to tell you that your brother was dead.

“They don’t even like the sirens on TV,” he said, and Jeffrey got the feeling Dale was the kind of guy who scooped up spiders and took them out of the house instead of just killing them.

Dale asked, “You got a brother?”

“Not that I know of,” Jeffrey told him, and Dale threw back his head and laughed like a braying horse.

Jeffrey waited for him to finish before asking, “We’re right on the county line, aren’t we?”

“Yep,” Dale agreed. “Catoogah’s that way, Avondale’s here. My kids’ll go to the school up on Mason Mill.”

Jeffrey looked around, trying to get his bearings. “Looks like you’ve got a nice place here.”

“Thanks.” He motioned toward the garage. “You wanna beer?”

“Sure.” Jeffrey was unable to hide his admiration as they walked into the shop. Dale ran a tight ship. The floor was painted a light gray, not a drop of oil in sight. Tools were suspended on a Pegboard, black outlines showing where everything belonged. Baby food jars containing bolts and screws hung from under the top cabinets like wineglasses in a bar. The whole place was lit up bright as day.

Jeffrey asked, “What exactly do you do here?”

“I’m restoring cars mostly,” he said, indicating the Dart. “I’ve got a paint shed out back. The mechanicals are done in here. My wife does the upholstery.”

“Terri?”

He tossed Jeffrey a look over his shoulder, probably impressed that Jeffrey remembered her name. “That’s right.”

“Sounds like a pretty good setup.”

“Yeah, well,” he said, opening a small refrigerator and taking out a Bud Light. “We’d be doing okay except for my oldest one. Tim sees your ex-wife more than he sees me. And now my sister is sick, had to quit her job over at the factory. Lot of stress on the family. Lot of stress on a man, trying to look after them.”

“Sara mentioned Tim has asthma.”

“Yeah, pretty bad.” He twisted the top off the bottle and handed it to Jeffrey. “We’ve got to be real careful around him. I gave up smoking cold turkey the day the wife took him back from the doctor’s. Tell you what, that liked to killed me. But we do what we have to do for our kids. You don’t have any, do you?” He laughed, adding, “I mean, not that you know of.”

Jeffrey made himself laugh, though considering his circumstances it wasn’t very funny. After an appropriate interval, he asked, “I thought you did metal plating.”

“Still do,” he said, picking up a piece of metal from his worktop. Jeffrey saw it was an old Porsche medallion, plated in shiny yellow gold. The set of fine-tipped paintbrushes beside it indicated Dale had been working on filling in the colors. “This is for the wife’s brother. Sweet ride.”

“Can you run me through the process?”

“Plating?” His eyes widened in surprise. “You came all the way out here for a chemistry lesson?”

“Can you humor me?”

Dale didn’t stop to think it over. “Sure,” he agreed, leading Jeffrey to a bench in the back of the shop. He seemed almost relieved to be in familiar territory as he explained, “It’s called a three-step process, but there’s more to it than that. Basically, you’re just charging the metal with this.” He pointed to a machine that looked like a battery charger. Attached were two metal electrodes, one with a black handle, the other with a red one. Beside the machine was another electrode with a yellow and red handle.

“Electricity runs positive from the red, negative from the black.” Dale indicated a shallow pan. “First, you take what you want to plate and put it in here. Fill it with solution. You use the positive, clean it with the chrome stripper. Make it negative, activate the nickel.”

“I thought it was gold.”

“Nickel’s underneath. Gold needs something to stick to. Activate the nickel with an acid solution, banana clip the negative to one side. Use a synthetic wrap on the end of the plating electrode, dip it into the gold solution, then bond the gold to the nickel. I’m leaving out all the sexy parts, but that’s pretty much it.”

“What’s the solution?”

“Basic stuff I get from the supplier,” he said, putting his hand on top of the metal cabinet above the plating area. He felt around and pulled out a key to unlock the door.

“Have you always kept that key up there?”

“Yep.” He opened up the cabinet and took down the bottles one by one. “Kids can’t reach it.”

“Anybody ever come into the shop without your knowing it?”

“Not ever. This is my livelihood,” he said, indicating the thousands of dollars’ worth of tools and equipment in the space. “Somebody gets in here and takes this stuff, I’m finished.”

“You don’t ever leave the door open?” Jeffrey asked, meaning the garage door. There were no windows or other openings in the garage. The only way in or out was through the metal roll-door. It looked strong enough to keep out a Mack truck.

“I only leave it open when I’m here,” Dale assured him. “I close it up when I go into the house to take a piss.”

Jeffrey bent down to read the labels on the bottles. “These look pretty toxic.”

“I wear a mask and gloves when I use them,” Dale told him. “There’s worse stuff out there, but I stopped using it when Tim got sick.”

“What kind of stuff?”

“Arsenic or cyanide, mostly. You pour it in with the acid. It’s pretty volatile and, being honest here, it scares the shit out of me. They’ve got some new stuff on the market that’s still pretty nasty, but it can’t kill you if you breathe it wrong.” He pointed to one of the plastic bottles. “That’s the solution.”

Jeffrey read the label. “Cyanide free?”

“Yeah.” He chuckled again. “Honest to God, I was looking for an excuse to change over. I’m just a big ol’ pussy when it comes to dying.”

Jeffrey looked at each bottle, not touching them as he read the labels. Any one of them looked like they could kill a horse.

Dale was rocking back on his heels, waiting. His expression seemed to say he was expecting some reciprocation for his patience so far.

Jeffrey asked, “You know that farm over in Catoogah?”

“Soy place?”

“That’s it.”

“Sure. Keep going that way”-he indicated the road heading southeast-“and you run right into it.”

“You ever have anybody come over here from there?”

Dale started to put away the bottles. “Used to be they’d cut through the woods sometimes on their way to town. I got kind of nervous, though. Some’a them folks ain’t exactly your upstanding types.”

“Which folks?”

“The workers,” he said, closing the cabinet. He locked it back and returned the key to its hiding place. “Hell, that family is a bunch of fucking idiots if you ask me, letting those people live with them and all.”

Jeffrey prompted, “How’s that?”

“Some of these folks they bring down from Atlanta are pretty bad off. Drugs, alcohol, whatever. It leads you to do certain things, desperate things. You lose your religion.”

He asked, “Does that bother you?”

“Not really. I mean, I guess you could say it’s a good thing. I just didn’t like them coming on my property.”

“You worried about being robbed?”

“They’d need a plasma torch to get into this place,” he pointed out. “Either that or have to come through me.”

“You keep a gun?”

“Damn straight.”

“Can I see it?”

Dale walked across the room and reached up on top of another cabinet. He pulled down a Smith amp; Wesson revolver and offered it to Jeffrey.

“Nice gun,” Jeffrey told him, checking the cylinder. He kept the weapon as meticulously clean as his shop, and fully loaded. “Looks ready for action,” Jeffrey told him, handing back the gun.

“Careful now,” Dale warned, almost jokingly. “She’s got a hair trigger.”

“That a fact?” Jeffrey asked, thinking the man was probably pleased with himself for setting up such a good alibi should he ever “accidentally” shoot an intruder.

“I’m not really worried about them robbing me,” Dale explained, returning the weapon to its hiding place. “Like I told you, I’m real careful. It’s just, they’d come through here and the dogs would go crazy, the wife would freak out, the kids would start crying, got me all het up, and you know that ain’t good.” He paused, looking out at the driveway. “I hate to be this way, but we’re not living in Mayberry. There are all kinds of bad people out there and I don’t want my kids around them.” He shook his head. “Hell, Chief, I don’t have to tell you about that.”

Jeffrey wondered if Abigail Bennett had used the cut-through. “Any of the people from the farm ever come to the house?”

“Never,” he said. “I’m here all day. I would’ve seen them.”

“You ever talk to any of them?”

“Just to tell them to get the fuck off my land,” he said. “I’m not worried about the house. The dogs would tear them apart if they so much as knocked on the door.”

“What’d you do?” Jeffrey asked. “I mean, to stop them from cutting through?”

“Put in a call to Two-Bit. Sheriff Pelham, I mean.”

Jeffrey let Dale’s comment slide. “Where’d that get you?”

“Same place as when I started out,” Dale said, kicking his toe into the ground. “I didn’t wanna bother Pat with it, so I just called up there myself. Talked to old Tom’s son Lev. He’s not bad for a Jesus freak. You met him?”

“Yeah.”

“I explained the situation, said I didn’t want his people on my property. He said okay.”

“When was this?”

“Oh, about three, maybe four months ago,” Dale answered. “He even came out here and we walked along the back property line. Said he’d put up a fence to stop them.”

“Did he?”

“Yeah.”

“You take him into the shop?”

“Sure.” Dale looked almost bashful, a kid bragging about his toys. “Had a sixty-nine Mustang I was working on. Damn thing looked like it was breaking the law just sitting in the driveway.”

“Lev’s into cars?” Jeffrey asked, surprised by this detail.

“I don’t know a man alive wouldn’t be impressed by that car. Stripped it from the ground up- new engine, new suspension and exhaust- about the only thing original on that baby was the frame, and I chopped the pillars and dropped the top three inches.”

Jeffrey was tempted to let him get sidetracked but knew he couldn’t. He asked, “One more question?”

“Shoot.”

“Do you have any cyanide around?”

Dale shook his head. “Not since I quit smoking. Too tempted to end it all.” He laughed, then, seeing Jeffrey wasn’t joining in, stopped. “Sure, I keep it back here,” he said, returning to the cabinet over the metal-plating area. Again, he found the key and unlocked the cabinet. He reached far into the back, his hand disappearing for a few moments into the recesses of the uppermost shelf. He pulled out a thick plastic bag that held a small glass bottle. The skull and crossbones on the front sent a shiver through Jeffrey’s spine as he thought about what Abigail Bennett had been through.

Dale placed the bag on the counter, the glass bottle making a clink. “I don’t even like touching this shit,” he said. “I know it’s stable, but it freaks me the fuck out.”

“Do you ever leave the cabinet unlocked?”

“Not unless I’m using what’s in there.”

Jeffrey bent down to look at the bottle. “Can you tell if any salts are missing?”

Dale knelt, squinting at the clear glass. “Not that I can tell.” He stood back up. “’Course, it’s not like I count it out.”

“Did Lev seemed interested in what was inside this cabinet?”

“I doubt he even noticed it was there.” He crossed his arms over his chest and asked, “There something I should be worried about?”

“No,” Jeffrey told him, though he wasn’t sure. “Can I talk to Terri?”

“She’s with Sally,” he said, then explained. “My sister. She’s got this problem with her…” He indicated his lower regions. “Terri goes over when she has bad spells and helps her watch the kids.”

“I need to talk to her,” Jeffrey said. “Maybe she’s seen someone around the garage who shouldn’t be.”

Dale stiffened, as if his honesty had been challenged. “Nobody comes into this place without me,” he said, and Jeffrey believed him. The man wasn’t keeping that gun around because it made him feel pretty.

Dale allowed, “She’ll be back tomorrow morning. I’ll tell her to come see you as soon as she gets back.”

“Appreciate it.” Jeffrey indicated the poison. “Do you mind if I take this?” he asked. “I want to dust it for fingerprints.”

“Glad to have it out of here,” Dale agreed. He opened one of his drawers and took out a latex glove. “You wanna use this?”

Jeffrey accepted the offer and slipped on a glove so that he could take the bag.

“I’m sorry I can’t be specific with you, Dale. You’ve been really helpful, but I’d prefer if you didn’t tell anybody I was over here asking about this.”

“No problem.” Dale’s mood was almost exuberant now that the questioning was over. As Jeffrey was getting into his car, he offered, “You come on back sometime when you can sit a while. I took pictures of that sixty-nine ’Stang every step of the way.”

Lena was sitting on her front steps when Jeffrey pulled up in front of her house.

“Sorry I’m late,” he told her as she got into the car.

“No problem.”

“I was talking to Dale Stanley about plating.”

She stopped in the middle of buckling her seat belt. “Anything?”

“Not much.” He filled her in on Dale’s operation and Lev’s visit. “I dropped the cyanide by the station before I came to get you,” he told her. “Brad is running it to Macon tonight to have one of their fingerprint guys take a look at it.”

“Do you think you’ll find anything?”

“The way this case has been going?” he asked. “I doubt it.”

“Was Lev ever alone in the shop?”

“No.” He had thrown out that question before leaving Dale’s house. “I don’t know how he would steal the salts, let alone transport them, but that’s a pretty odd coincidence.”

“I’ll say,” Lena agreed, settling down in her seat. She was drumming her fingers on the armrest, a nervous habit he’d seldom seen her employ.

He asked her, “Something wrong?”

She shook her head.

“You ever been to this place before?”

“The Pink Kitty?” She shook her head again. “I doubt they let women in unescorted.”

“They’d better not.”

“How do you want to do this?”

“It shouldn’t be too busy on a Monday night,” he said. “Let’s show her picture around, see if anybody recognizes her.”

“You think they’ll tell us the truth?”

“I’m not sure,” he admitted, “but I think we’ll have a better chance of somebody talking to us if we go in soft instead of swinging our dicks around.”

“I’ll take the girls,” she offered. “Nobody’s gonna let you back into the dressing rooms.”

“Sounds like a plan.”

She flipped down the visor and slid open the mirror, checking her makeup, he guessed. He took another look at her. With her dark Latin coloring and perfect complexion, Lena probably didn’t spend many nights alone, even if it was with that punk Ethan Green. Tonight, she wasn’t wearing her usual suit and jacket, instead opting for some black jeans and a formfitting red silk shirt that was open at the collar. She also wasn’t wearing a bra that he could tell, and she was obviously cold.

Jeffrey shifted in his seat, turning off the air-conditioning, hoping she hadn’t seen him looking. Lena wasn’t young enough to be his daughter, but she acted like it most of the time and he couldn’t help but feel like a dirty old man for noticing her finer points.

She flipped the visor closed. “What?” She was staring at him again.

Jeffrey searched for something to say. “Is this a problem for you?”

“A problem how?”

He tried to think of a way to phrase it without pissing her off, then gave up. “I mean, you still drinking too much?”

She snapped, “You still fucking around on your wife?”

“She’s not my wife,” he shot back, knowing it was a lame retort even as the words left his mouth. “Look,” he said, “it’s a bar. If this is going to be too hard for you-”

“Nothing’s too hard for me,” she told him, effectively ending the conversation.

They drove the rest of the way in silence, Jeffrey staring ahead at the highway, wondering how he had become an expert at picking the most prickly women in the county to spend his time with. He also wondered what they would find at the bar tonight. There was no reason for a girl like Abigail Bennett to hide that book of matches in her Snoopy doll. She had carefully sewn it back up, and Jeffrey wouldn’t have even known to look if he hadn’t tugged on the end of a thread like pulling a loose string on a sweater.

A pink neon cat glowed in the distance, even though they were a good two miles from the bar. The closer they got, the more detail they could see, until the thirty-foot-tall feline in stilettos and a black leather bustier loomed in front of them.

Jeffrey parked the car close to the road. But for the sign, the building was nondescript, a windowless one-story structure with a pink metal roof and a parking lot big enough to hold about a hundred cars. This being a weeknight, there were only about a dozen spaces taken, mostly with trucks and SUVs. An eighteen-wheeler was parked long-ways in front of the back fence.

Even with the car windows up and the doors closed, Jeffrey could hear the music blaring from the club.

He reminded her, “We’ll just take this slow.”

Lena slid off her seat belt and got out of the car, obviously still pissed at him for asking about her drinking. He would put up with this kind of shit from Sara, but Jeffrey would be damned if he let himself get whipped by one of his subordinates.

“Hold up,” he told her, and she stopped in place, keeping her back to him. “You check that attitude,” he warned her. “I’m not putting up with any shit. You got that?”

She nodded, then resumed walking. He took his time, and she shortened her stride until they were walking shoulder to shoulder.

She stopped in front of the door, finally saying, “I’m okay.” She looked him in the eye and repeated herself. “I’m really okay.”

If Jeffrey hadn’t had just about everybody he’d met today skillfully hide some vital piece of information about themselves while he stood around with his thumb up his ass, he probably would’ve let it slide. As it was, he told her, “I don’t take lip from you, Lena.”

“Yes, sir,” she told him, not a trace of sarcasm in her tone.

“All right.” He reached past her and opened the door. A fog of cigarette smoke hung like a curtain inside, and he had to force himself to enter. As Jeffrey walked toward the bar that lined the left side of the room, his back molars started to pulsate along with the heavy bass cranking out of the sound system. The space was dank and claustrophobic, the ceiling and floor painted a matte black, the chairs and booths scattered around the stage looking like something that had been pulled out of a Denny’s fifty years ago. The odor of sweat, piss and something he didn’t want to think about filled his nostrils. The floor was sticky, especially around the stage that took up the center of the room.

About twelve guys in all ages, shapes and sizes were there, most of them elbowed up to the stage where a young girl danced in a barely visible thong and no top. Two men with their guts hanging over their jeans were propped up at the end of the bar, their eyes glued to the huge mirror behind it, half a dozen empty shot glasses in front of each of them. Jeffrey allowed himself a look, watching the reflected girl shimmy up and down a pole. She was boyishly thin with that gaze they all seemed to perfect when they were onstage: “I’m not here. I’m not really doing this.” She had a father somewhere. Maybe he was the reason she was here. He had to think things at home were pretty bad if this was the kind of place a young girl ran to.

The bartender lifted his chin and Jeffrey returned the signal, holding up two fingers, saying, “Rolling Rock.”

He had a name badge on his chest that said Chip, and he certainly acted like he had one on his shoulder as he pulled the tap. He slammed both glasses on the bar, foam dripping down the sides. The music changed, the words so loud that Jeffrey couldn’t even hear how much the drinks were. He threw a ten on the bar, wondering if he’d get change.

Jeffrey turned around, looking out at what could politely be called a crowd. Back in Birmingham, he had visited his share of titty bars with other cops on the force. The strip joints were the only bars open when their shifts ended, and they had all filed into the clubs to wind down, talk a little, drink a lot and get the taste of the streets out of their mouths. The girls there had been fresher, not so young and malnourished that you could count their ribs from twenty feet away.

There was always an underlying tinge of desperation in these places, either from the guys looking up at the stage or the girls dancing on them. One of those late nights in Birmingham, Jeffrey had been in the bathroom taking a leak when a girl was attacked. He had broken down the door of the dressing room and pulled the man off her. The girl had this open disgust in her eyes-not just for her would-be attacker, but for Jeffrey, too. The other girls filed in, all of them half-dressed, all of them looking at him that same way. Their hostility, their razor-sharp hatred, had sliced into him like a knife. He had never gone back.

Lena had stayed at the front door, reading the notices on a bulletin board. As she walked across the room, every man watched her, whether in person or through one of the many mirrors. Even the girl onstage seemed curious, missing a beat as she swung around the pole, probably wondering if she had some competition. Lena ignored them, but Jeffrey saw their stares, their eyes tracing up and down her body in a visual rape. He felt his fists clench, but Lena, noticing, shook her head.

“I’ll go in the back and check the girls.”

Jeffrey nodded, turning around to get his beer. There was two dollars and some change on the bar, but Chip was nowhere in sight. Jeffrey drank from the mug, almost gagging at the lukewarm liquid. Either they were watering down their drinks with sewage here at the Pink Kitty or they had hooked up the taps to a bunch of horses they kept under the bar.

“Sorry,” a stranger said, bumping into him. Jeffrey instinctively reached back to check his wallet, but it was still there.

“You from around here?” the guy asked.

Jeffrey disregarded the question, thinking this was a pretty stupid place to cruise for dates.

“I’m from around here,” the guy said, listing slightly.

Jeffrey turned to look at him. He was about five six with stringy blond hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks. Drunk out of his mind, he was clutching the bar with one hand, the other straight out from his side as if he needed it there to balance. His fingernails were edged with dirt, his skin a pale yellow.

Jeffrey asked, “You come here a lot?”

“Every night,” he said, a snaggled tooth sticking out as he smiled.

Jeffrey took out a photo of Abigail Bennett. “You recognize her?”

The guy stared at the photo, licking his lips, still swaying back and forth. “She’s pretty.”

“She’s dead.”

He shrugged. “Don’t stop her from being pretty.” He nodded at the two mugs of beer. “You gonna drink that?”

“Help yourself,” Jeffrey told him, moving down the bar to get away from him. The guy was probably just looking for his next drink. Jeffrey had dealt with that attitude before. He had seen it in his father every morning when Jimmy Tolliver dragged himself out of bed.

Lena made her way to the bar, her expression answering his question. “Just one girl in the back,” she told him. “You ask me, she’s a runaway. I left my card with her, but I doubt anything will come out of it.” She looked behind the bar. “Where’d the bartender go?”

Jeffrey hazarded a guess. “To tell the manager a couple of cops are here.”

“So much for coming in soft,” she said.

Jeffrey had spotted a door beside the bar and assumed that’s where Chip had scurried off to. Beside the door was a large mirror that had a darker tint than the others. He guessed someone, probably the manager or the owner, was on the other side, watching.

Jeffrey didn’t bother knocking. The door was locked, but he managed to bust it open with a firm twist of the knob.

“Hey!” Chip said, backing into the wall with his hands up.

The man behind the desk was counting money, one hand going through the bills, the other tapping out numbers on an adding machine. “What do you want?” he asked, not bothering to look up. “I run a clean place. You ask anybody.”

“I know you do,” Jeffrey said, taking Abigail’s photo out of his back pocket. “I need to know if you’ve seen this girl around here.”

The man still didn’t bother to look up. “Never seen her.”

Lena said, “You wanna take a look and tell us again?”

He did look up then. A smile spread out on his wet lips, and he took a cigar out of the ashtray at his elbow and chewed on it. His chair groaned like a seventy-year-old whore when he leaned back in it. “We don’t usually have the pleasure of such fine company.”

“Look at the picture,” she told him, glancing down at the nameplate on his desk. “Mr. Fitzgerald.”

“Albert,” he told her, taking the Polaroid from Jeffrey. He studied the image, his smile dropping a bit before he stretched it back out. “This girl looks dead.”

“Good call,” Lena told him. “Where are you going?”

Jeffrey had been watching Chip edge toward another door, but Lena had caught him first.

Chip stuttered, “N-nowhere.”

“Keep it that way,” Jeffrey warned him. In the light of the office, the bartender was a scrawny guy, probably from a serious drug habit that kept him from eating too much. His hair was cut short over his ears and his face was clean shaven, but he still had the air of a derelict about him.

Albert said, “Wanna lookit this, Chippie?” He held out the photo, but the bartender didn’t take it. Something was going on with him, though. Chip’s eyes kept darting from Lena to Jeffrey to the picture, then the door. He was still edging toward the exit, his back pressed to the wall as if he could sneak away while they were watching.

“What’s your name?” Jeffrey asked.

Albert answered for him. “Donner, like the party. Mr. Charles Donner.”

Chip kept sliding his feet across the floor. “I ain’t done nothing.”

“Stop right there,” Lena told him. She took a step toward him, and he bolted, swinging open the door. Lunging, she caught the back of his shirt, spinning him around straight into Jeffrey’s path. Jeffrey’s reaction was slow, but he managed to catch the young man before he fell flat on his face. He couldn’t keep the kid from banging into the metal desk, though.

“Shit,” Chip cursed, holding his elbow.

“You’re fine,” Jeffrey told him, scooping him up by his collar.

He bent over at the waist, clutching his elbow. “Shit, that hurt.”

“Shut up,” Lena told him, picking up the Polaroid from the floor. “Just look at it, you pud.”

“I don’t know her,” he said, still rubbing his elbow, and Jeffrey wasn’t sure whether or not he was lying.

Lena asked, “Why’d you try to run?”

“I’ve got a record.”

“No shit,” Lena said. “Why’d you try to run?” When he didn’t answer her, she popped the back of his head.

“Christ, lady.” Chip rubbed his head, looking at Jeffrey, beseeching him for help. He was barely taller than Lena, and even though he had about ten pounds on her, she definitely had more muscle.

“Answer her question,” Jeffrey told him.

“I don’t wanna go back inside.”

Jeffrey guessed, “You’ve got a warrant out on you?”

“I’m on parole,” he said, still holding his arm.

“Look at the picture again,” Jeffrey told him.

His jaw tightened, but Chip was obviously used to doing what he was told. He looked down at the Polaroid. He showed no visible recognition on his face, but Jeffrey saw his Adam’s apple bob as if he was trying to stop his emotions.

“You know her, don’t you?”

Chip glanced back at Lena as if he was afraid she’d hit him again. “If that’s what you want me to say, yeah. Okay.”

“I want you to tell me the truth,” Jeffrey said, and when Chip looked up his pupils were as big as quarters. The guy was obviously high as a kite. “You know she was pregnant, Chip?”

He blinked several times. “I’m broke, man. I can barely feed myself.”

Lena said, “We’re not hitting you up for child support, you stupid fuck.”

The door opened and the girl from the stage stood there, taking in the situation. “Y’all okay?” she asked.

Jeffrey had looked away when she opened the door, and Chip took advantage of the situation, sucker punching him square in the face.

“Chip!” the girl screamed as he pushed past her.

Jeffrey hit the floor so hard he literally saw an explosion of stars. The girl started screaming like a siren and she fought Lena tooth and nail, trying to keep her from chasing after Chip. Jeffrey blinked, seeing double, then triple. He closed his eyes and didn’t open them for what seemed like a long while.

Jeffrey was feeling better by the time Lena dropped him off at Sara’s. The stripper, Patty O’Ryan, had scraped a line of skin off the back of Lena’s hand, but that was all she had managed to do before Lena twisted the girl’s arm behind her back and slammed her to the floor. She was cuffing the stripper when Jeffrey finally managed to open his eyes.

“I’m sorry,” was the first thing Lena said, but it was somewhat drowned out by O’Ryan’s brutal, “Fuck you, you fucking pigs!”

Meanwhile, Charles Wesley Donner had gotten away, but his boss had been helpful, and with a little prompting gave them everything but Chip’s underwear size. The twenty-four-year-old had been working at the Pink Kitty for just under a year. He drove a 1980 Chevy Nova and lived in a flophouse on Cromwell Road down in Avondale. Jeffrey had already called Donner’s parole officer, who had been less than pleased to be awakened by a ringing phone in the middle of the night. She confirmed the address and Jeffrey had dispatched a cruiser to sit on it. An APB had gone out, but Donner had been in prison for six years on drug-trafficking charges. He knew how to hide from the police.

Jeffrey eased open Sara’s front door as gently as he could, trying not to wake her up. Chip wasn’t strong, but he had landed his fist in the exact right place to bring Jeffrey down: under his left eye, just grazing the bridge of his nose. Jeffrey knew from experience the bruising would only get worse, and the swelling already made it hard to breathe. As usual, his nose had bled profusely, making it look a hell of a lot worse than it was. He had always bled like a faucet whenever he was hit on the bridge of his nose.

He turned on the under-counter lights in the kitchen, holding his breath, waiting for Sara to call out to him. When she didn’t, he pried open the refrigerator and took out a bag of frozen peas. As quietly as he could, he broke up the freezer burn, separating the peas with his fingers. He clamped his teeth together and hissed out some air as he pressed the bag against his face, wondering again why it never hurt as much when you got injured as it did when you tried to fix it.

“Jeff?”

He jumped, dropping the peas.

Sara turned on the lights, the fluorescent tubes flickering above them. His head seemed to explode with it, a dull throbbing matching the flicker.

She frowned, taking in the shiner under his eye. “Where’d you get that?”

Jeffrey bent over to pick up the peas, all the blood rushing to his head. “The gettin’ place.”

“You have blood all over you.” It sounded more like an accusation.

He looked down at his shirt, which was a lot easier to see in the bright lights of her kitchen than in the bathroom at the Pink Kitty.

“It’s your blood?” she asked.

He shrugged, knowing where she was going with the question. She seemed to care more about the possibility of a stranger getting hepatitis from him than the fact that some stupid punk had nearly broken his nose.

He asked, “Where’s the aspirin?”

“All I have is Tylenol, and you shouldn’t take that until you know the results from your blood test.”

“I’ve got a headache.”

“You shouldn’t be drinking, either.”

The remark only served to annoy him. Jeffrey wasn’t his father. He could certainly hold his liquor and one sip of a watered-down beer didn’t qualify as drinking.

“Jeff.”

“Just drop it, Sara.”

She crossed her arms like an angry schoolteacher. “Why aren’t you taking this seriously?”

The words came out before he anticipated the shitstorm they would kick up. “Why are you treating me like a fucking leper?”

“You could be carrying a dangerous disease. Do you know what that means?”

“Of course I know what it means,” he insisted, his body feeling slack all of a sudden, like he couldn’t take one more thing. How many times had they done this? How many arguments had they had in this same kitchen, both of them pushed to the edge? Jeffrey was always the one who brought them back, always the one to apologize, to make things better. He had been doing this all his life, from smoothing down his mother’s drunken tempers to stepping in front of his father’s fists. As a cop, he put himself in people’s business every day, absorbing their pain and their rage, their apprehension and fear. He couldn’t keep doing it. There had to be a time in his life when he got some peace.

Sara kept lecturing him. “You have to be cautious until we get the results from the lab.”

“This is just another excuse, Sara.”

“An excuse for what?”

“To push me away,” he told her, his voice rising. He knew he should take a step back and calm down, but he was unable to see past this moment. “It’s just another thing you’re using to keep me at arm’s length.”

“I can’t believe you really think that.”

“What if I have it?” he asked. Again, he said the first thing that came to his mind. “Are you never going to touch me again? Is that what you’re trying to tell me?”

“We don’t know-”

“My blood, my saliva. Everything will be contaminated.” He could hear himself yelling and didn’t care.

“There are ways around-”

“Don’t think I haven’t noticed you pulling away.”

“Pulling away?”

He gave a humorless laugh, so damn tired of this he didn’t even have the energy to raise his voice again. “You won’t even fucking tell me you love me. How do you think that makes me feel? How many times do I have to keep walking out on that tightrope before you let me come back in?”

She wrapped her arms around her waist.

“I know, Sara. And it’s not that many more times.” He looked out the window over the sink, his reflection staring back at him.

At least a full minute passed before she spoke. “Is that really how you feel?”

“It’s how I feel,” he told her, and he knew it was true. “I can’t keep spending all my time wondering whether or not you’re mad at me. I need to know…” He tried to finish, but found he didn’t have the energy. What was the point?

It took some time, but her reflection joined his in the window. “You need to know what?”

“I need to know you’re not going to leave me.”

She turned on the faucet and took a paper towel off the roll. She said, “Take off your shirt.”

“What?”

She wet the towel. “You’ve got blood on your neck.”

“You want me to get you some gloves?”

She ignored the barb, lifting his shirt over his head, taking particular care not to bump his nose.

“I don’t need your help,” he told her.

“I know.” She rubbed his neck with the paper towel, scrubbing at the dried blood. He looked at the top of her head as she cleaned him. Blood had dried in a trail down to his sternum, and she wiped this up before tossing the towel into the trash can.

She picked up the bottle of lotion she always kept by the sink and pumped some into the palm of her hand. “Your skin’s dry.”

Her hands were cold when she touched him and he made a noise that sounded like a yelp.

“Sorry,” she apologized, rubbing her hands together to warm them. She tentatively placed her fingers on his chest. “Okay?”

He nodded, feeling better and wishing that she wasn’t the reason why. It was the same old back-and-forth, and he was letting himself get pulled back in.

She continued to rub in the lotion in small circles, working her way out. She softened her touch, lingering around the pink scar on his shoulder. The wound had not completely healed yet, and he felt little electric tingles in the damaged skin.

“I didn’t think you would make it,” she said, and he knew she was thinking back to the day he had been shot. “I put my hands inside of you, but I didn’t know if I could stop the bleeding.”

“You saved my life.”

“I could have lost you.”

She kissed the scar, murmuring something he couldn’t hear. She kept kissing him, her eyes closing. He felt his own eyes close as she kissed a slow pattern across his chest. After a while, she started to work her way down, unzipping his jeans. Jeffrey leaned back against the sink as she knelt in front of him. Her tongue was warm and firm as it traced the length of him, and he braced his hands on the countertop to keep his knees from buckling.

His whole body shook from wanting her, but he forced himself to put his hands on her shoulders and pull her back to standing. “No,” he told her, thinking he’d rather die than risk giving her some awful disease. “No,” he repeated, even though he wanted nothing more than to bury himself inside her.

She reached down, using her hand where her mouth had been. Jeffrey gasped as she cupped him with her other hand. He tried to hold back, but looking at her face only made it harder. Her eyes were barely open, a rush of red pinking her cheeks. She kept her mouth inches from his, teasing him with the promise of a kiss. He could feel her breath as she spoke, but again could not hear what she was saying. She started kissing him in earnest, her tongue so soft and gentle he could barely breathe. Her hands worked in tandem, and he nearly lost his restraint when she took his bottom lip between her teeth.

“Sara,” he moaned.

She kissed his face, his neck, his mouth, and he finally heard what she was saying. “I love you,” she whispered, stroking him until he could no longer hold back. “I love you.”