Creekers (29 page)

In part-whisper, part-croak, and with her eyes still closed, she responded: “You think I’m
happy
doing this?”

Phil sat down on the edge of his bed, brows raised. He couldn’t summon a reply.

“I was like you, remember?” she continued. “I wanted to be a cop, and I was a
good
cop.” A hesitation, an uneasy gulp. “You want to know why I’m not a cop now?”

I already do,
Phil thought, but of course he couldn’t say that, not without blowing his cover completely. “So tell me what happened.”

“Mullins blackballed me. From day one he was trying to get into my pants but, you know, I figured it was all a joke. Country bumpkin small-town chief, just acting the part like any good ol’ boy. But soon the joke stopped being funny. One night he tried to rape me, told me if I didn’t put out he’d fire me. I filed an harassment complaint with the state liaison office, but Mullins got it nixed, trumped up a bunch of crap and phony documentation, and then he fired me.”

Phil stared at what she was saying as much as he stared at her. He’d like nothing more than to believe her, but how could he? Mullins’ own claims of her on-duty sexual negligence provided an undeniable corroboration with the photos that had been taken after her separation from the department. There could be no denying what the pictures showed—sexual acts in public—and there could be no denying that Vicki Steele was the woman in the pictures.

“But I’ll bet that’s not what you heard, huh?” she whispered on. “I’ll bet you heard some snowjob about me turning tricks on duty, huh? Is that what you heard?”

“I never
heard
anything, Vicki,” Phil lied again, protecting his cover. “I’ve only been back in town a month.”

“Yeah, well, that was the word the bastard put out all over town and in my personnel file, that I ‘demonstrated social behavior unbecoming of an officer in general’ and ‘engaged in acts of sexual solicitation and prostitution while in uniform.’ He even had ‘witnesses’ turn in written statements and promises to testify if I took him to court. Next thing I knew I was on the street with no place to go. And no way any police department in the country would even consider hiring me. The son of a bitch ruined me, all because I wouldn’t fuck him.”

The word
fuck
clanged like a cracked bell. But, again, Phil couldn’t believe her story.
I saw the pictures,
he grimly reminded himself. Too often in life, he knew, people changed for the worse, and Vicki Steele had to be a prime example.
That’s why she came here today. To save face, to make an excuse now that she knew I was back in town.
All he could do now was feel sorry for her.

And it made him feel ultimately shitty, too, not just the tailspin her life had taken since he’d ended their relationship, but the acknowledgement of what he was doing to her right now. He was
using
her, wasn’t he? There could be no other word for it. Phil was pretending to be someone he wasn’t, and he was using her misfortune as a means to get deeper into his PCP leads.

She’s a perfect information dupe,
he told himself.
And I’m a perfect asshole…

Vicki finally straightened up and opened her eyes. “You don’t believe me, do you?”

“I believe you,” he lied yet again. He didn’t want to contemplate how many lies he’d told already. “I know all about getting blackballed, Vicki. One day I’ll tell you what happened to me on Metro. Same thing, different circumstances.”

She sighed silently. Relief? Resignation? “I’ll bet you think I blame you, though, right?”

Finally here was a question he didn’t have to answer with a lie, though the topic was not an enlightening one. “You’d have every right to, Vicki. The main reason things went to hell for us is because I wanted out of this town more than anything. I know that. And I don’t feel too good about the way things ended for us.”

“Yeah, but at least you
knew
what you wanted, and you went for it. I was too insecure—too
afraid
—to think I could do better than Crick City. And look at me now…”

“I’m not exactly doing great myself,” Phil tried to lighten things. “I gotta goddamn Master’s degree, and I’m making seven bucks an hour planting rosebushes and laying manure.”

“You always manage to get around the issues, don’t you?” she said. “I guess that’s your way of being polite.”

“What’s that?”

Her face hardened. For a moment she wasn’t pretty at all; she was ugly in a raving glare of self-disgust. “I’m a roadside stripper, Phil. I’m not gonna lie to you.” The big gemlike green eyes struggled against sudden tears. “I’m a whore.”

In an unbidden instant, part of Phil felt transported back to another time not really that long ago, a time when they were in love with each other and when the current state of their lives was so remote as to be unthinkable. He wanted to argue with her, to shake her around and bellow in her face that she should stop indicting herself and step out of the seamy ditch her life had fallen into.
Stop feeling sorry for yourself and get your shit together!
he wanted to rant.
All right, you fell down, so get the fuck back up and make a real life for yourself before it’s too late!

But he could say nothing of the sort, and he knew it. He needed her, for the case. He was a cop, and he had a job to do. He had to play along, or else he’d lose his best lead yet.

Yeah, my best lead. A girl I used to love. A girl I almost married…

“Excuse me,” she said and abruptly stood. “I need to use your bathroom.”

“Right in there,” he pointed.

She went in and closed the door. He knew she was crying, which made him feel even more despicable. He was low enough to use her for the profit of the investigation. But beyond that, no matter how hard he rationalized it to Mullins or even to himself, he knew he would always be partly to blame for what had happened to her.

After several minutes, he began to pace his room. Several more and he began to worry.

He knocked on the bathroom door. “You okay, Vicki?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’ll be out in a sec.”

And when she did indeed re-emerge from the bathroom, she seemed back in control, but—

Oddly so.

Again, she looked neat as a pin, her posture perfect, every shining red hair in its place, but her eyes bore a glint now like ice. She seemed stolid, hard, when only a few minutes ago she’d been falling apart.

“Look, I’m sorry about that,” she said.

“We all have bad moments, Vicki.”

“I guess the real reason I came here was because I wanted you to know what happened, that’s all. I didn’t want you to think—”

“Don’t worry about it. I’m glad you stopped by.”

Their eyes locked. For a moment the green ice cracked. “Really?”

“Sure. Look, the past is the past, right? We both got bum raps, that’s life. Why don’t we try to put the past behind us, forget about all that and leave it lie? Let’s be friends, okay?”

Something like a repressed despair threatened to collapse her entire face, but she seemed to stave it off. “I’d really like that, Phil. I’d like that a lot, but—”

“So what’s the problem?”

“It’ll have to be a secret.”

“A
secret?
Why?”

She steeled herself. “I’m married now, Phil,” she said very coldly. She raised her left hand, flashed the wedding ring with a diamond on it the size of a pea. Then:

“I’m married to Cody Natter.”

He tried to manage his shock, tried to keep it from getting out and molesting the memory of how he used to feel about her.

“Still want to be friends?” she asked.

“Sure. I don’t care if you’re married to Elvis.”

She let a smile eek out, gave him a final glance, then kissed him very lightly on the lips.

“See you around,” she said and left.

His bewilderment held him in a momentary check. When he looked around the doorway and down the hall, she was already gone.

Cody. Natter’s. Wife.
Each word smacked like a piton into stone. How could any man, however irredeemable, let his own wife dance in a strip joint and turn roadside tricks in pickup trucks. When Phil closed the door, he wanted to punch a hole in it. His anger raged like a huge beast trapped in a tiny cage. He thought he would explode.

And the emotion doubled when he went into the bathroom. Perhaps his cop’s sensitivities had tuned him in; anyone else wouldn’t have noticed it in a million years. But—

“Oh, my God, Vicki, no no no—”

At the corner of the old porcelain sink, the faintest sprinkling of diminutive white dust lingered. He knew what it was even before he rubbed a trace across his upper gum and felt the numb, cold tingle.

Cocaine. No wonder Natter got her stripping and turning tricks so fast. He got her hooked on coke…

— | — | —

Fourteen

Phil walked into the station
at five of eight, keyed up by an array of emotions: despair, perplexion, and anger…