Port of Sorrow (8 page)

CHAPTER
14

“Who released him?” Julia asked the deputy manning the station’s front desk.

“It doesn’t say,” the deputy sighed. “But I assume it must have been Gilles. He was the only one with the authority, and he never does the damn paperwork until you hound his ass for a week.”

“Where’s Gilles now?”

“Probably down at Houndstooth.”

“Where and what is that?” asked Julia.

The deputy stared at her as if she had three heads.

“It’s a warehouse on the docks that’s been converted into an after-hours club. It opens when the bars close.”

“That’s illegal.”

“Course it is, but where else is a cop to get a drink after pulling a dusk-to-dawn shift? Houndstooth is okay. He keeps the place quiet and he knows who to keep out.”

“How do I get there?”

“Just go to the docks. You’ll see Gilles’ Camaro parked out front of a warehouse with a yellow door. There’s also a small mural of an Indian eagle on the front. It looks like shit if you ask me, but Houndstooth painted it himself and he’s real sensitive about his art.”

“Thanks.”

“No problem. Just don’t tell the asshole where you got the info.”

Julia grinned and headed upstairs to meet the sheriff.

SHERIFF MARSHALL WAS
standing with his back to the door, looking out the window at his ocean view. If it hadn’t been for a blanket of low fog, he would be watching pleasure boats sailing up the Strait, playing dare as they crisscrossed the invisible border between Canada and the United States.

He remained standing after Julia knocked and entered. He didn’t want to return to business too quickly. When he finally turned around, Julia was sitting in front of his desk, chewing a thumbnail.

“Did you meet with MacDougall?” he asked, sliding down into his leather chair.

“The report should be finished this afternoon.”

“Why so long?”

Julia shrugged. “She didn’t say.”

Marshall paused to jot some notes onto a lined pad of paper. “Any suspects yet?”

“One,” Julia answered.

“Oh.” Marshall couldn’t hide his surprise. “Who?”

“A man by the name of Wells. Selene’s roommate said he stopped Wells in the middle of an attempted rape an hour before her murder.”

“He?”

“His name’s Finn. He also goes by the stage name Veronique.”

“Well, I’ll be damned.” Marshall leaned back in his chair, his eyes full of laughter and shock. “I was inches away from her after the murder, and I’ll be goddamned if I would ever guess she was a man.”

“I was surprised, too.”

Marshall jotted down a few more notes. “Did this Finn character see Wells pull the trigger?”

“No.”

Marshall frowned. “Well, it’s a start. So what’s your next step?”

“I thought I’d talk to Finn again and then get a photo of Wells to show to the witnesses. Maybe someone will remember him.”

Marshall nodded in agreement.

“Just watch yourself,” he warned. “If this guy likes to dress as a woman, who knows what else he’s into.”

THE DOCKS WERE
shrouded in stubborn morning mist, but Gilles’ black Camaro stood out in a reserved parking stall beside the warehouse’s bright yellow door. Julia slid in beside it. She saw what the deputy meant by a lousy mural as she walked to the door and tried the handle. It was locked.

After rapping on it with her knuckles, Julia waited until a gin-joint peephole opened at eye level.

“Who are you?” asked a blinking, chocolate-brown eye.

Julia held up her badge. “I need to see Gilles.”

“You see him anytime,” said the eye. “I not coffee shop.”

Gritting her teeth, Julia answered, “I also need a drink.”

“Okay, you come in.”

An electronic lock clicked open and Julia found herself standing at the entrance to a male fantasy: pool tables, dart boards, neon jukebox, big-screen television with satellite sports, bikini-clad beer girls framed on the walls, peanut shells cluttering the floor, overstuffed chairs, and a mahogany bar that stretched as far as the eye could see.

The owner of the chocolate eye grinned with delight at Julia’s stunned reaction. He was a short, big-bellied man with a flattened nose, chubby cheeks and dark skin. Julia immediately pegged him as Inuit, probably from Alaska or across the border in Nunavut.

“You like?” he asked. “You want scotch?”

“No thanks.”

“What you want then? I have draft beer and any liquor you want. You look like scotch drink. I have Grants, Glenfiddich, Bells, Black and White, Famous Grouse. You name it.”

“Thanks, but a glass of orange juice would be fine.”

“What you want in it? Tequila, vodka, gin, rum?”

“Nothing.” Julia was losing her patience.

“You told me you want drink. Now you don’t. I not like that.”

“Fine! I’ll have a beer.”

“What kind?”

“I don’t care.”

“You like Weinhardt? Good beer.”

“Sure.”

“You want chaser with that? Scotch, maybe.”

“No!”

The fat man flashed a wide grin, unfazed by the anger in her voice. He darted behind the bar, his reflection dancing off a hundred half-empty bottles.

When her eyes adjusted to the dark, Julia saw Gilles sitting at the far end of the bar by himself. As she approached, she noted a half-dozen empty shooter glasses and five empty beer mugs littering the space around him. A sixth mug of beer sat in front of him, half-full.

When she sat on the vacant stool beside him, the bartender slid her glass of beer along the bar as though it was a curling rink. She grabbed it inches before it smashed into Gilles’ glass sentinels.

“Good reflexes,” said the bartender, his cheeks straining to hold in his smile. “That’ll be two fifty.”

Julia dug in her pocket, fished out a five, and slapped it on the bar. Ignoring the beer, she turned to Gilles who hadn’t seemed to notice her arrival.

“When did you release Finn?” she asked.

Gilles’ head snapped back and he turned to face her with bleary, bloodshot eyes. His mouth formed a crooked grin.

“Well, well,” he slurred. “If it ain’t the rook. What brings you to the boys’ club?” He slapped his hand onto her thigh and squeezed, smiling wider when Julia knocked it away.

“I asked you a question,” she said.

“Give us a kiss.”

She slapped his hand away again and repeated, “I asked you a question.”

“Oh?” Gilles rocked back in mock shock, nearly falling off his stool. “How impolite of me. Of course you can lick my balls.”

Julia’s balled-up fist smashed into Gilles face before she could stop it, sending him to the floor with a bloody lip. Flat on his ass, he began to laugh.

“You like to be on top, rook?” he taunted. “All you have to do is ask.”

“Fuck you!”

“That’s what I’m talking about,” he laughed. “Come and get it.”

Julia couldn’t believe the anger that reddened her face and made her body tremble. She should have known it was a mistake coming here.

“I not like fighting,” said the bartender, leaning over the bar. “It bad for me.”

Julia glared at Gilles then stormed across the wooden floor. As she reached the door, she heard Gilles calling, “Don’t turn your back on me, rook. Round 2 is mine.”

JULIA COULD BARELY
hold back the tears as she tore away from the docks. How could she have thought that Gilles would actually talk to her? The bastard had been nothing but a pig since the first moment they met. What made her think that would’ve changed?

Turning the radio up high in an attempt to shake the anger, she listened to Wynonna Judd’s latest he’s-a-good-man-with-a-hard-life song, but even that soulful voice failed to soothe her.

Again Julia wondered if she belonged here in this life, or if she should’ve fought against her nature, given in to Jimmy, and raised bratty kids on the farm.

Hell no, girl. Everybody would’ve been miserable then. Don’t let a man break you down.

Her inner-voice was right. She was stronger than that.

AS SHE NEARED
the outskirts of town, Julia spotted Finn walking in the opposite direction. With a squeal of rubber, she pulled a U-turn and drove up beside him.

Finn turned to the open passenger window, his face swollen and bruised like a second-prize boxer.

“We need to talk,” said Julia.

Finn climbed into the truck.

CHAPTER
15

“You set me up,” Wells screamed as he threw open the battered door of his Ford Vigilante truck and jumped into untamed, knee-high quack grass.

“Take it easy now, boy. Remember who you’re talking to.”

“Oh, I know who I’m talking to alright,” Wells bellowed. “I’m talking to the son-of-a-bitch who set me up for murd—”

The words became trapped in his throat as a giant hand lunged forward and wrapped around his windpipe. Thick, callused fingers instinctively squeezed tight. Wells gagged, his face turning blue, his legs kicking helplessly as he was lifted off the ground.

The man in the faded dungarees studied him without expression. His unblinking blue eyes were soulless. The man unbuttoned Wells’ blue jeans with his free hand and yanked them down.

“I don’t like dirty talk,” Big Brother said with a smile as he freed a hunting knife from a pouch on his belt and waved its six-inch blade in front of Wells’ bulging eyes.

Wells shook his head in futile anger as Big Brother sliced through the elastic band of his jockeys. The dull-side of the blade sent a shiver of electricity up each thigh as it pressed into his flesh. Torn briefs fluttered to the ground, leaving Wells’ exposed to the world.

“Your cock is too goddamn large. I ought a shorten it.” He stroked the knife across Wells’ quivering belly before guiding it down to roughly shave away some dark pubic hair.

“I used to enjoy eating polar bear balls,” Big Brother continued. “The Inuit eat them raw or in a wonderful soup, but once I showed them how to fry ’em up in garlic butter, there was no other way.” He laughed at the memory.

Wells couldn’t believe he was going to die in the middle of a junkyard with his pants around his ankles. Tears threatened to burst from his eyes, but he fought them back. Weakness would only quicken his demise.

Big Brother studied Wells’ blood-drained face and smiled. “Maybe if you get an erection, show me how pleased you are to see me, then I’ll let you go.”

Wells had played this game before.

The first time was when he was only ten years old. He sat in a corner of the tree house with a magazine that would make Hugh Hefner blush between his naked legs. His tiny penis was drowning in his hand, and no matter how hard he tried, it stayed wrinkled and soft.

“Come on, Welly. You a fag or what?” Big Brother teased, forcing his loyal band of neighborhood children to laugh along.

“I . . . I can’t do it with you all looking,” Wells yelled. His face, pimpled in a promise of the scarring acne that would torment him in later years and force him to grow a beard, flushed crimson.

“Yeah, you only do it in front of your sister,” Big Brother jibbed back.

“Leave me alone, Rodney.”

Wells froze after he spoke the forbidden name, and fear shook his soul.

Big Brother lunged forward faster than a mongoose to snatch a fistful of hair.

“P-please, I’m sorry,” Wells screamed.

Big Brother glared at him through a mask of hate. “What did you call me?”

“I-I didn’t mean . . . I forgot.”

Big Brother tightened his grip on Wells’ hair, and then with the slowest of smiles, undid his own zipper. Wells whimpered at the sight of the stubby cock.

“D-don’t make me.”

Big Brother grinned.

“Touch it.”

“No way.”

Big Brother yanked on his hair and sprayed hot spittle over his face.

“Touch it or I’ll make you suck it.”

Wells fought back his revulsion, reached out his hand, and quickly jabbed at it with his finger.

“I want you to stroke it like a kitten,” Big Brother ordered.

“B-but you said I only had to touch it.”

“Stroke it or I’ll stuff it in your mouth.”

Pain shot across his scalp as Big Brother increased the pressure on his hair. Defeated, Wells reached out his hand to stroke it.

Now, twenty years later, Wells strained to remember his last conquest: a bimbo brunette hitchhiker with .38 caliber nipples. She fought like a tigress before he slammed her face into the dashboard. He felt the cold blade of the knife skimming across his penis and scraping the underside of his balls. Despite the horror of it, he felt his penis grow.

“Good boy,” Big Brother cooed. “Now remember your manners when you talk to me.”

Wells was thrown to the dirt, his pale ass sticking up through the weeds like a puffball fungus. Red and purple welts were already beginning to rise on his bruised throat.

Big Brother pulled a cold can of Coors out of a Styrofoam cooler and sat down on the wooden steps in the shade of the weather-beaten porch. He waited until Wells pulled up his pants before offering it to him. Wells grabbed the can, popped its top, and gulped its contents in one long swallow. He paused only once to burp, his eyes cold with rage.

With the rawness of his throat soothed, Wells swallowed his anger, bowed his head and said quietly, “I’m sorry.”

“I’m sure you are, boy. But just so it don’t happen again, why don’t you tell me what’s gotten you so riled.”

“It’s that stripper you told me to have a poke at. She ended up dead and the cops think I murdered her.”

“Did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Did you murder her?”

“Hell, no. I was clear across town at the time.”

“Hmmm. Wait here a second.”

Big Brother pulled himself up from the porch step and walked into the house. Every floorboard creaked under his weight. He returned a minute later with a shotgun.

“Catch,” he said and tossed the gun at Wells.

Startled, Wells grabbed the gun. It was a two-barrel pistol grip.

“Now, you see what you got there is the murder weapon,” Big Brother said with a grin. “And your fingerprints are all over it.”

Wells threw the gun back as if it had bitten him. Big Brother laughed as he caught the barrels in one hand and placed it behind his back.

“Why are you doing this?” Wells croaked.

“Because I can, boy. Because I can.”