The Minotauress (45 page)

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Authors: Edward Lee

BOOK: The Minotauress
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"I know, and I don't feel too good about it."
Dean didn't feel like talking anymore, and Ajax could tell. Dark clouds slipped in over Elliot Bay, and the wind gusted up. "Shit, man, it's Saturday. You've got the car, your wife's out of town—it's settled."
"What's settled?"
Ajax put his cigarette out in his tartar sauce cup. "We're going to your place."
"Why not?" Dean said. "You can help me vacuum the carpet."
Ajax laughed as they walked away. He eye-balled several girls getting off the Waterfront Street Car, uttering typical sexist comments. But as he and Dean waited for the WALK sign, Ajax said, "Hey, what did you say you did with that can of Skoal?"
"I threw it out," Dean said.
"You sure?"
Dean cocked a brow. "Yeah."
"Then I guess that's a can of lark's tongues in aspic sticking out in your back pocket."
Huh?
 Dean's hand padded back to the rear pocket of his jeans. His hand froze.
Then he withdrew another can of Skoal.
"You're putting me on, right?" Ajax asked. "You're making all this shit up just to jerk me."
"I wish I was." Dean's eyes fixed wide on the inexplicable can. "This is really creeping me out."
He looked at the can some more. His mouth began to water. And then:
"Fuck it."
Dean opened the can, and took a
big
 dip.
««—»»
"What the damn bloody
fuck?
" exclaimed the first cop.
The second cop squinted. "What's that... hangin' out of his... "
"Dick?" the third cop finished.
The third cop would be one Sergeant Alphonse Taylor Lass, the DeSmet Police Department's ranking officer. He was essentially the chief, having only to answer to the town counsel and the mayor. His asshole and cock still felt radiant from the whore's first-class butt-suck and blow job back at the station. Fine indeed. But the recollection turned to rot at what he was looking at now in the hard streams of three police Mag-Lites.
It was the security guard who lay at their feet.
Pants down.
Eyes gone.
And—
Jesus!
 Sergeant Lass thought.
The kid's nuts were hanging out of his dead dick, from tender threads tracing back through his peehole.
"Jesus!" Sergeant Lass said aloud.
Eventually the county coroner—who was also the county recorder of deeds, the county magistrate, and the county's official notary—would transfer the perplexing corpus delectus to the Office of the South Dakota Medical Examiner where it would be properly autopsied and found to have had the entirety of its brain aspirated through the right ocular cavity.  
This unfortunate security guard would not only prove to be the most bizarre murder to ever take place in DeSmet, South Dakota.
It would be the
only
 murder to take place in DeSmet, South Dakota.
Sergeant Lass glared at his two accompanying constables. "For fuck's sake! Isn't anybody gonna say anything? This guy's lying here with no eyes and his fuckin' balls hanging out of his
dick!
"
The first officer only stared, jaw jacked open. The second officer had already fainted.
Lass scratched his head, idly glanced up at the massive wooden sign erected above the cattle coves behind them. The sign read:
WELCOME TO THE LOHAN RANCH
««—»»
"Let me ask you something?" Ajax was examining the gold-plated trophy. "How much did you get paid to crank the horns out of bulls?"
"Steers, not bulls. And I didn't get paid anything. I worked on my father's ranch. It was just one of the chores, like taking out the garbage."
Ajax wheezed laughter, slapping his thighs. "Cranking horns off of magnificent spectacles of nature is the same thing as taking out the garbage?"
"You pansy city boys take out the garbage, farm boys crank horns," Dean elaborated.
Ajax continued to wheeze as they set down the case of Tsing Tao beer, which they'd picked up at the Ballard Market on their way over. Ajax was on an oriental-beer kick. Dean didn't care. He spat tobacco juice in the sink.
"That's the spirit," Ajax observed, then looked around the quaint split-level. "Guess you cleaned the place up since your wife had her conniption fit."
"Well, no," Dean said.
"But the place is immaculate!"
"Not really. It could use a vacuuming, and a dusting."
"Man, you are whipped. Daphne's turned you into a slave." Ajax cracked open two Tsing Tao's, passed one to Dean. "
She
 should be doing that shit. I'll bet you even do the cooking."
"Yeah, but only because I like to cook."
"Um-hmm." Ajax wasn't convinced as he browsed around with his beer. It was a modest but nice new house, appointed in light tones and new furniture. "Decent crib," he approved. But when he turned back around, Dean was walking away up the dark stairs.
Some host.
Ajax followed. "Ah, the love den," he observed when he found Dean standing in the bedroom. "So this is where you get it on with your beautiful wife... once a month?"
Dean wasn't listening. He rummaged for something in the opened closet, his back to Ajax. "You got me remembering," he murmured.
"What?"
Dean pulled out a moving box full of books, sat down on the bed with it. He swigged more beer, then began to search through the books.
"Let me ask you something," Ajax said. "How the hell can you chew that funky tobacco and drink beer at the same time?"
"Fifteen years of experience, that's how. Every day from age ten to twenty-five, I pinched a can a day."
"Back in the old days, huh?" Ajax grinned. "The
horn-crankin'
days."
"Any rancher with balls eats and drinks with a lip full of Skoal. Only
pussies
 don't."
"I'm edified," Ajax remarked. "And what are you looking for?"
"Just... something... "
"You're acting weird, man. I like it." Something in the back of the closet caught his eye, something long that reminded him of a giant pair of pliers. He walked over, pulled it out, then weighed it heavily in his hands. Parallel steel handles, two-feet long, intersected at the business-end, sporting twin half-circles lined with sharpened serrations that interlocked when you drew the handles apart. "What the hell is this thing?"
Dean looked up, disinterested. "My torque-plier."
"What the hell's a—"
"My horn-cranker," Dean corrected.
Ajax' eyes widened on the tool as if knowing what it was gave it some strange heat. "So
this
 is the thing you used to tear the horns out of innocent bulls."
"Steers," Dean corrected. "A young gelding. They're not full-grown; the horns are pretty much just nubs about three to six inches long."
"And you just yank 'em out like teeth." Ajax hefted the tool in his hands. "Say, do you ever go back the DeSmet to defend your championship?"
"Hell no. They don't even have a state horn-cranking competition anymore. It's not like the old days now. Everything's automated. Now they have these mechanical things on rails that move down the cattle-gate line and extract the horns automatically. Just pops 'em out one right after another."
"Progress sucks, huh?"
Ajax put the torque-plier back. "Come on, admit it. You miss all that shit at least a little, don't you?"
Dean didn't answer.
"Come on? The old days on the ranch? Cranking horns and chewing Skoal? Humping any and all available pussy? Gettin' pissy drunk in the bars every night and slapping your bitches around?"
Dean didn't answer.
Ajax nosed around while Dean continued flipping through his books. He noticed a half opened dresser drawer.
Hmm,
he thought. Then—
Oh, Christmas!
 
The drawer was full of lacy women's under garments a la Victoria's Secret.
Tough stuff!
Ajax thought. He ran his fingers over the smooth, shiny garments. A quick glance over his shoulder, then he deftly grabbed a pair of devil-red panties trimmed in black lace, and stuffed them in his pants.
Hell, she'll never miss 'em.
 Then he plucked another pair out—cornflower-blue and crotchless—and held them up. "Holy shit, man. I can't imagine a prettier picture in the world than Daphne walking around in these."
Dean glanced over, shrugged, then got back to his books. "It gets dull after a while."
Ajax gaped. "Yeah, you're acting weird, all right. A woman with Daphne's bod walking around in
these
 can never be dull. It's perpetual wood, man. It's Hard-On City."
"Let me tell you something, Ajax," Dean said aside. "Show me the best-looking woman in the world and I'll show you a guy who's sick of fucking her."
Ajax gaped. He almost choked on his Tsing Tao. "You're telling me... you're sick of fucking Daphne?"
"That's right. Sick to death. She's a bossy, prissy bitch. She never wants to have sex anyway and, between you and I, that's fine with me. I'd rather fuck a pumpkin than stick my cock in her hole again."
Ajax gaped.
"Ah, here it is." Dean pulled out a black-covered hard-back book entitled
Incubi
 by some chump author named Edward Lee.
Ajax squinted. "What's that, a horror novel? Only idiots read that stuff. People who take drugs and shit."
Dean had opened the book. "Here's one box I
never
 got sick of fucking." The inside of the book had been cut out, creating a secret compartment. Inside lay a stack of polaroids. He flipped through the photos, then passed them to Ajax.
Ajax... gaped. And got wood. The dozen or so polaroids showed different poses of the same girl. Beautiful. Stark naked. Pert breasts with nipples sticking out like rose-pink thumb-ends, long honey-nut hair and ocean-blue eyes, a tight flat stomach and a perfectly shaved—
"Man oh man," Ajax muttered. "This is the same chick you showed me at Anthony's. Your last ex in DeSmet."
Each lewd pose punched him in the eye like glaring pornography. Lying on a bed with her long legs straight up, fingers squeezing her cherry-sized clitoris. Hands and knees, grinning wickedly over her shoulder, perfect ass upthrust. Lounging on her side with a dildo the size of a gourd stuck up in her to the end. And much, much more.
"Arianne," Dean whispered.
Ajax was shaking his head back and forth over and over, pressed by disbelief. "This girl's hotter than a rock in a campfire... and you dumped her?"
"Didn't just dump her," Dean reminded. "I cheated on her, treated her like shit, and beat the crap out of her. More times than I can count."
Ajax' gaze widened on Dean. "You're fuckin' nuts. This girl's even hotter than Daphne.
Ten times
 hotter."

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