Spider mountain

18

We slept in until almost six o’clock, and both of us awoke feeling logy. The cell phones had been silent all afternoon, but neither one of us could quite wake up. I was suddenly conscious of this warm female in my arms.

“Hey, girl,” I said. “Wanna fool around?”

“I have to go potty,” she said.

I started laughing. So did I. Reality intruding.

“How’s the mitt?”

“Aches, but it’s better. Those medics were generous with their drugs.”

“I can almost get my eyes open,” I said.

“I think I saw a swimming pool,” she said, a few minutes later.

It being the end of the summer season, the motel wasn’t full, and, as the sun set, most of the guests were downtown going to dinner. We took turns changing in the bathroom. Carrie came out in a reasonably modest two-piece, while I wore my khaki running shorts, having failed to pack a real bathing suit. I wouldn’t have done that on a beach, but the pool was situated behind the motel and out of view of any windows or walkways. There was a six-seater hot tub in one corner of the pool enclosure with its own privacy fence to deter demon spawn from playing in it.

The pool’s water was downright cold, but we both started to wake up after a few minutes of pretending that the pool’s temperature was “refreshing.” I decided to see if that hot tub was working. It was, and the water was still warm from the last occupants. I fired up the jets and submerged my aching body in the swirling waters, trying not to breathe in too much chlorine.

Carrie came over and sat down on the side of the hot tub. She’d taken off the bandage. Her hand was swollen and reddish. Her black hair was wet and hung down in a sleek, sculptured mat, nicely framing her pretty face. She extended her legs out over the water and looked them over. So did I. She caught me looking and gave me a teasing smile.

“You a leg man, there, Mr. ex-lieutenant Richter?”

“Actually, I’m a whole-foods kind of guy,” I replied, wondering how far she might take this. Naturally, I was hoping for the best.

She raised one leg and then the other like a dancer, still appraising. Then she glanced down at her front. As slender as she was, she had a small if pleasing superstructure. She clicked her lips as if disappointed in what she was looking at.

“Don’t tell me,” I said.

“Tell you what?”

“That you have small breasts.”

“Afraid so,” she said, putting on a sad face.

“Well, that does it,” I said. “I mean-small breasts? That’s a total disqualification. You can hardly be a woman in America if you have small breasts. Everyone knows that. My goodness, what a total disaster.”

She propped her feet close together on the edge of the tub and eyed me over her knees, which she began to bump gently together. Since I was directly in front of her in the water, the motion did interesting things to those slick wheels of hers.

“Everyone knows?” she said. “Really?” Bump. Bump.

“Totally,” I said, wanting to clear my throat.

“What a shame,” she said. “And just when I was thinking I needed-something.”

“Something?”

“Don’t squeak like that.”

“Um.”

“I had it a moment ago,” she said with a dramatic sigh.

Bump.

“I know I did. Right there on the tips of my toes.” Lift. Look. Down. “But that disqualification business-well, I didn’t know that. But I do appreciate your telling me.”

Bump. Bump.

“Um.”

“Um? That the best you can do?” She reached forward and scooped up some warm water, and then began wetting her legs and thighs. I couldn’t see her face anymore, probably because I wasn’t looking at her face. An achingly familiar physiological short circuit between my brain and my nether parts had been firmly established.

“Well, really,” she said. “How ‘bout it there, Mr. Um? Are you up for a little nonintrusive massage work or not? Girl with a problem here. Got a groove in my head and a paddle for a hand. And, I almost forgot, small breasts. But, well…”

Finally, clarification. I submerged and resurfaced with my head and shoulders between her knees. I rose to lean over her disqualifying breasts. Her thighs were tense, and I began rubbing my face on the front of her bathing suit, just below her breasts. When I felt her start to relax, I put my hands on her hips, eased her halter top aside with my chin, and then went to work on her qualification problems to see if anything could be done.

Anything could be done, as it turned out. But all my plans for a leisurely exploration evaporated when I lifted first one knee and then the other onto my shoulders, leaned forward, and kissed her on the mouth. The next moment she was in the water with me, sans top and bottom, and telling me to go fast.

Go fast? No problem. For once, we went up the mountain and didn’t bounce off. She clung to me like hot, wet silk, and this time it was the two of us taking care of business.

We relaxed into the foaming, hissing water, holding each other close, soaking up the heat, both inside and out, for several lovely minutes. She had her head on my chest, and I got a close look at what was going to be a very interesting scar.

Then we heard the unmistakable sounds of teenaged girls in the passageway between the motel and the pool enclosure. We moved apart. I helped put her suit together and then hiked my own trunks back up.

“You’re supposed to say something,” I said.

She thought for a moment and then said, “Thanks, I needed that.”

“It was all that peek-a-booty that did it.”

She giggled. “A hard man is good to find,” she said softly. “You seemed to get the message quick enough.”

“Hard to miss,” I said, and she gave me a mock glare. “The message, that is.”

Three preteens emerged onto the pool deck and immediately jumped in, followed by lots of brightly squealed oh-my-Gods. They happily ignored the two ancient adults huddled up in the hot tub.

“Like, I mean, it’s time to, like, you know, go?” I said.

“Like, totally,” she said.

We hit a corner bistro for dinner, where we encountered Mose Walsh. He was decked out in his evening hunting kit and sitting at the bar looking suitably inscrutable. For once there were no women hanging around. We invited him to join us at a table. I ordered drinks.

“So where’s all the action tonight, Chief?” I asked him.

“It’s early,” he said, looking around just to make sure he hadn’t missed anyone. “You guys connected to the big shootout over at the sheriff’s cabin?”

“Us?” Carrie and I said, almost simultaneously.

Mose chuckled. “Yeah, you,” he said. “All of sudden we got feebs and state guys right here in River City and some pretty dramatic rumors flying. Too bad about Bill Hayes, though. He was a good guy.” He saw me frown and asked why. Carrie gave me a warning look.

“Bill Hayes got himself entangled with some of the shit M. C. Mingo was into,” I said. “He kind of redeemed himself at the end, but there are some desperately loose ends still out there.”

The waiter brought us our wine and Mose another scotch. “Not what I’m hearing,” he said. “What I heard was that it all was over. Bureau suits on the courthouse steps declaring that the incident was wrapped, strapped, and ready for transport. Robbins County has an interim sheriff, the Carolina SBI is shoveling shit as fast as they can, and we’re due for an interim election pretty soon.”

Carrie gave me an I-told-you-so look, silently reminding me of her cynical prediction that the feds would cap it off and declare victory. I drank some wine, then told Mose what had happened out there at Hayes’s cabin and detailed our most recent seance with Grinny Creigh.

“So you’re sayin’ that Nathan Creigh is out there in the backcountry somewhere, with six little girls? And the Bureau is aware of this?”

“I can’t speak for what the Bureau knows and doesn’t know, but I sent them a background report, as did Carrie here, and the SBI sure as hell has been informed.”

“Then why aren’t they acting on it?” he asked.

“I give up,” I said. “Maybe they are, and we’re just out of the loop.”

“So you guys are gonna do the reasonable thing and step aside, right?” He was looking at Carrie when he said that. There was more than just a glimmer of direct male interest in those dark eyes, and I actually felt a momentary pang of jealousy. With that face and his determination to score at least once a night, I’d wager he had himself quite a track record. Carrie shook her head.

“No fucking way,” she declared quietly. “We are most definitely not letting go, not until I know those kids are safe-or dead. That’s why we’re going back to that cabin. In fact, I was just thinking: You must know that backcountry pretty well. Care to take on an unscheduled guide job?”

Mose raised both hands in a gesture of surrender. “No, ma’am, I do not,” he said immediately. “You’re talking about getting on the trail of Nathan and possibly Grinny Creigh in the deep woods of Robbins County.”

“That idea make you nervous, Mose?” I asked. I was going to rain on his parade, too.

“Tracking them?” he said. “No. It’s what might happen when we caught up with them that worries me. To quote the lady at the table, no fucking way.”

“Six little girls, Mose? In the hands of that monster?”

He shook his head again. No way meant just that.

“You really have lost your taste for it, haven’t you?” I said. Carrie patted her pockets and then produced a vibrating cell phone. She got up to go find a better signal.

He gave me a neutral look. “I absolutely have,” he said. “I lost my taste for it when I finally realized that there’s an unlimited supply of evil assholes out there. Unlimited. Unending. A storm surge of them. And for some unknown reason, they’re being allowed to breed. Their spawn comes out worse than they were. I gave that shit up over ten years ago. Working homicide was like standing at the outflow of a city waste treatment plant and putting your fist in the pipe-about the time you got used to the idea that your hand was eternally covered in shit, the tank would overflow on your head.”

“So that’s it?” I asked. I couldn’t really justify goading him, but I was. Maybe it was the image of six little girls in chains in some damned cave. Or the way he had been appraising Carrie. Or the way she’d seemed to not mind all that much.

“So now you’re down to sitting in bars, chasing loose women, and taking the occasional walk in the pretty woods?”

He sat back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. He really did look like those pictures of Sitting Bull when he did that.

“Down to?” he said. Then he smiled. “You can’t provoke me, Loo. I have fully clarified my life. I work an honest and productive job during the day. Then I go out at night, have some scotch, and chase those terrible loose women, as you called them. The chase is always fun; catching them is usually fun but always comforting. Having a cup of coffee with a new and totally relaxed woman in the morning is pleasant. Knowing that she’s gonna go home in an hour is a daily relief. I’ve never married, because I don’t think I’ll live long enough to need the care of a good woman when I start to drool. So, yes, it’s one day at a time, and for the most part, every one of them is both wonderful and ten times better than my best day on the Job.”

He looked like he was getting ready to push back from the table. I reached out and held his wrist. “Six little girls,” I said. “Sold by their so-called mothers to a pig-eyed Gorgon on Spider Mountain, who packs them into Marionburg at night, gets them spayed, and then ships them into a life of slavery in some fucking Arab’s tent? Six little girls? Who are now happily ensconced in something called the glass hole?”

His eyes widened when I said the words “glass hole,” but then he looked pointedly at his wrist, which I realized I was gripping pretty hard. I let go and sat back. He wouldn’t look at me now.

“Unlimited supply,” he recited. “Endless. A fucking red tide of evil bastards. And I never made even a dent in it, and neither can you. The difference is, I already know it.”

Carrie was coming back to the table, so I gave up. “Okay, Mose. Sorry I pushed. Go get lucky.”

He got up, gave me a quick, sad grin, shot me with his thumb and forefinger, and went back to the bar. Carrie sat down.

“What was that all about?” she asked.

“I was hoping to shame him into helping us find Nathan up there,” I said.. “Because, otherwise, I think we’re dead in the water.”

She shook her head. “We’re only dead in the water if we quit,” she said. She took a deep breath. “First,” she said, “I need a nice big rare steak. Then we’re going back out there to the Creigh place and we’re going to take another look.”

“Tonight?” I said.

“Yes, tonight. In about two hours, to be exact.”

“We can’t do that, Carrie-they’ve got that place secured. They’ll run our asses right out of there.”

She patted the pocket with the cell phone. “Not according to Bigger John,” she said.