Chapter 12
Coercing a police officer into giving out confidential information was harder than selling a beaten up Volkswagen to a millionaire, decided Jack impatiently. After nerve jangling hours of listening to Officer Pearson droll into the receiver to a Wisconsin officer in a case presumably related to Kurt Bailey's untimely transgressions, his nerves began to pop one by one. He could wait to see Bailey behind bars, but he couldn't wait to retrieve his wife.
He pulled at Pearson's sleeve to get his attention, broke into his conversation, paced the floor scratching his neck.
"You really know how to make a nuisance of yourself," grumbled Pearson, replacing the receiver. "I could have you arrested for impeding an officer of the law, you know."
"Listen . . . " Jack's eyes bugged as he shook a fist at Pearson. ". . . if your wife disappeared and the police had a lead that just might get her back, wouldn't you go crazy listening to some damned fool rambling on about an out-of-state case . . . wasting time?"
Pearson snickered. "Kid, if my wife was gone, I'd be the happiest damn man in the world!" His eyes fell to Sherrie Turner's sophisticated smile. But then my wife's fat and ugly . . . wonder if she gives him head?
"Bullshit," muttered Jack painfully. "Last week I would have said the same thing.. . . "
Pearson drew a heavy sigh. "Okay, kid." He rocked back in his chair. "If you happen to see the Greyhound bus records stating that a woman of your wife's description bought a ticket to Hurly, Wisconsin . . . I ain't really breaking a police officer's code, am I?"
"Jesus, you're human after all," breathed Jack, ready to kiss the bear of a man swinging around in his swivel chair to face a map of Illinois, including bits of Wisconsin and Iowa.
A chipped nail pointed to a small dot in northern Wisconsin. "That's where she went."
Jack grabbed his coat.
"Oh, and kid. . . . "
A trace of a smile creased Jack's unshaven face.
"Yeah. . . ? "
"Remember what I said about getting bloodied for sticking your nose in other people's business. Don't play cop."
A little bit of information is sometimes a dangerous thing, ruminated Officer Pearson, but by the time Jack drove to that dumpy hick town, he wouldn't have a chance to play cop. At least it got the guy out of his hair. A pudgy finger dialed Wisconsin as his eyes lifted to watch Jack Turner charge past security.
Once, twice . . .forever? A thread of rationale wove in Sherrie's dusty mind as choice, this time her own, dictated by the animalish scent of another woman's genitals, made her flick out her tongue before taking the lunge.
Slowly her pink tongue slid out from between her soft lips and Sherrie closed her eyes and buried her warm head in Jill's steaming loins and felt the pulsating head and moistness of her female lover's vagina. Her tongue wiggled and darted towards the hair fringed target. She paused a moment to savor the juices flaring in her nostrils.
Jill wrapped her legs around Sherrie's swan-like neck and thrust her hips up and ground her pelvis, moaning. Her arms flailed out, all control of her nervous system short-circuited. She was all nerves. The two shameless women writhed across the floor, rolling over once so that Sherrie lay flat on her back with Jill straddling her stomach. Her vagina ground over Sherrie's face as her hips pumped up and down against the maddening thrust of Sherrie's hot tongue.
Thrashing her blonde hair in shimmers of red under the lights, a banshee cry of demonic lust tore from
Jill's throat. She leapt to her feet, her breasts heaving, sheened with sweat, screaming: "Let me, let me!" Yanking Sherrie to her feet, the two naked women stood facing each other, glassy eyes sparkling under lust heavy lids.
"Let me fuck you!" Jill hissed. She guided her lover by the shoulders to the bed and eased her down so that she lay flat on her back, legs spread wide and shamelessly. She lay in a dream of lust. Languidly, Sherrie bent her knees and let her legs fall open so that every person in the room could see her crying, begging cunt.
Through half-swollen shut eyes, Jill watched, her fingertips playing in the forest of her cunt as Southworth came forward, his sickening face devilish in the red light. He handed Jill something that resembled a piece of the mechanical chair-a shaft with straps and buckles attached. Southworth glared licentiously down at his captive with a wild, tight expression. He reached down to pinch Jill on the breast, making her wince as he twisted the hardened nub of her nipple between steely fingers.
Then Jill was all motion, fastening buckles and positioning herself. Sherrie's eyes saucered as she stared at the dildo, hanging obscenely between Jill's lithe thighs like some kind of practical joke. One tight strap crossed her taut buttocks, pinching the flesh; they fastened a strap around each thigh and tightened the buckles so that the prick was erect . . . horrifyingly erect.
And Roy was more than willing to help. His fingers, eager and hot, got in the way of Jill's smaller ones, lie won in the end, pulling the buckle tight. Bending her knees and using one hand, Jill deftly slipped the cock end of the dildo into her own cunt and fucked herself. The cock twirled between the fringes of her cunt as she mewled.
Just before orgasm, she cupped her hands in front of her and Southworth handed Roy a bottle of oil which she poured into her hands. Ceremoniously, as if approaching a virgin, Jill smeared the oil over the plastic length of the artificial penis.
The captive did not flinch this time! Past memories of the chamber fluttered through her drugged mind, and only the pleasure, the godforsaken pleasure poked up through the clouds of remembrance. Shamelessly, the runaway wife thrust her hips upward and her hands squeezed the milky mounds of her breasts as she offered all of her sex to Jill.
Jill crawled down on the bed between Sherrie's taut thighs and the men went wild! The straps and buckles stripped about Jill's luscious flesh brought a collective groan of lechery from the Chicago corporate executives whose own wives forbid them the pleasure of fleshy vice.
Slowly, Jill lowered herself and Sherrie accommodatingly slid her hands under her buttocks and lifted her hips up so that her pouting pussy jutted out and her cunt twitched, searching to fuck the artificial penis in its hot walls.
Jill, lewdly, provocatively, rubbed the mushroomed head of the pink plastic dildo up and down the lubricated slit of her lover's vagina, searching for the sweet tasting hole of her cunt.
Sherrie squeezed her eyes shut and let her head loll hack and forth, her breasts quivering and glistening with sweat under the red lights. "Fuck me!" the words tore from her throat. "Fuck me like a man!"
Jack's blue eyes trailed up filigreed pine boughs to the bursting sun as his Datsun snow tires bit into the ice slickened narrow county road forking ahead. The back of his neck felt tight and ached from the long tedious drive . . . to nowhere? Ahead he caught a glimpse of a cafe, looking dirty and rundown in the pristine setting of green pines and pure snow.
Why the hell Sherrie would come here, he hadn't the foggiest. Didn't make any more sense than him fucking her in the ass. His neck screwed tighter at the loathsome thought. He hammered his fist on the steering wheel, tasting self-disgust. A woman of Sherrie's moral stature didn't deserve animalish treatment
Caffeine was the last thing he needed for his nerves, but his senses were fading fast and although the pathetic looking hamburger painted on the cafe's front was hardly appetizing, he had the sense to respect somatic needs. He'd been running on coffee and adrenalin; now his stomach was complaining sourly.
The drunken ass implanted on a beer can littered sofa watching Dallas Cowgirls shake their boobies was an alien creature to the one bending his head and pulling up his collar creating the hapless picture of a man looking for his wife.
I le took a seat at the counter and through heavy lidded eyes stared at the gruff faced man standing with one foot on a box of Folgers Coffee cans, smoking a cigarette and watching game shows on television.
"Cup of coffee, please . . . no cream . . . and a cheeseburger, no mustard."
Harvey surveyed the stranger suspiciously. He cocked his head to the side and smelled the cologne fragrance of city living and noted, too, the five o'clock shadow glooming the man's handsome face. The coffee dribbled from the pot as, tilting it, he kept a weary eye on the customer, sensing in him some of the alien qualities of the young auburn who . . . Now, don't bring trouble to your door, Harvey, he rebuked himself.
Yet he couldn't squelch curiosity. Last night's dog hunt haunted him still. "You ain' from these parts of the woods, are ya?"
It was an answer, not a question. Jack blinked through the steaming wafting from his coffee cup. "What makes you ask that?" The cup clattered on the saucer.
Harvey shrugged his shoulders. "Jes wonderin', tha's all." He turned his attention back to 'Match game' and stroked a scruffy chin, feeling, rather than watching the man stirring his coffee.
"You remember seeing a tall, auburn-haired woman with hair down to here come through here lately'. '" stated Jack.
Harvey's eyes Hinted. "Who are you, a private investigator? I don' know nothin' about it." He karate chopped the air stiffly and stared back at the pool television reception.
Jack watched the man's jaws mesh in profile. Through the steam making his sinuses drip, he smelled suspicion. "The bus stops yards from your door letting off every passenger ticketed to Hurly. and you don't remember who comes through your door?"
"Don' take it personal if I don' remember this lady, for chrissakes . . . I ain't responsible for other people."
Jack jumped to his feet. The long ride and sleepless nights focused on the apathetic man watching TV. "Listen, you bastard . . . if you know something . . . " And here he grabbed Harvey by the shirt sleeves and hissed in his face three inches from his.". . . know anything that could help me find my wife, I'll put a bullet through your eyes! I've had people shooting at me, and I ain't no chicken shit. . . you ask Bailey if you don' believe me!"
At the name Bailey, Harvey's heart jumped to his throat. "Okay, okay," he relented, shaking himself loose from Turner's white knuckled grip. "I remember her. Sh-she got off the bus and wanted to know where the Crackerbox was. . . . "
Jack's tired face screwed up. "The Crackerbox . . . what the hell's that?"
"It's down the road . . . but don' let anybody know I told you . . . you hear me?" he barked after the man running for the door. "You hear me? I wan' no part of this!"
Jack raked trembling fingers through his hair, feeling none of the cold. He unzipped his leather trimmed coat and wiped the sweat from his brow. Hands shook on the key chain. "Damned coffee. . . . " he cursed, pulling out of the cafe parking lot and heading down the road.
The blonde-haired hussy in red hunting underwear crooking a tempting finger caught his attention like iron to a magnet, and it was with a sigh of relief that he pulled into the Crackerbox's vacant parking lot and leapt to the door.
He squinted up at the sun, waiting for the door to open, while the postmark on Bailey's tight security mail kept parachuting into his brain. That and the bugged look on the cafe owner's face at the mention of Bailey. He stroked his scratchy chin and waited.
The door creaked open, didn't swing open in welcome as the blonde in the red underwear promised. The anemic, drawn face of a frightened woman peeked through the crack in the door, then disappeared.
Jack shouldered his way through with a grunt, watching the woman's face turn from surprise to fear. Her head shot around and she sucked in her breath tightly, showing off as she did, high cheek bones and a finely chiseled nose that one day, conjectured Jack, had been the makings of one gorgeous woman. The detective in him wondered what had gone wrong.
"I'm Jack Turner," he testified hotly, "and I've come to find my wife."
Anna's work gnarled hands clasped and pressed to her chest, her thin face twitching nervously. A man hadn't looked at her with that intensity for years, and the angry glare, so like her brother's accusation, made her wither.
"Her name is Sherrie . . . Sherrie Turner . . . I know she's been here . . . I've been in contact with the Chicago police," he said stiffly, plumping up confidence. "I have testimony from a cafe owner down the road . . . now where is she?"
Who was more nervous, the maid whose twitch had strengthened to a near convulsive tremor, or the caffeine sodden sodomist was a matter of conjecture.
He flipped open his wallet and Sherrie's shiny face smiled up at Anna. "This is Sherrie . . . have you seen her in the last couple of days? " Waiting for an answer, he flipped it again, mentally noting the musty dampness and aura of despair in the room. Even the deer's head hanging above the stone fireplace seemed to leer down at him unwelcomingly. No smell of roast duck, no sound of laughter, no register book . . . what kind of lodge was this?
Anna's hand flew to her mouth. She shook her head wildly. "No . . . no . . . I've never seen her . . . I.. .
Jack's hand shot to her wrist, giving it an angry, desperate twist. "Listen," he spat, "I have reason to believe that my wife has disappeared . . . if you know anything . . . " It was a long shot in the dark. Officer Pearson had simply given him the clue: Hurly, Wisconsin. With a sigh, he let go of her wrist and wondered if he was going crazy. Bailey, asshole that he was, had nothing to do with his daughter's disappearance.
Anna rubbed her wrist, eyes falling to Sherrie's face. A hot wetness stung her eyes. Had she the courage to end the nightmare of years of moral and psychic enslavement that deepened with each beautiful, hopeful face that appeared at the door? She fingered the gold band in her apron pocket. Clutching it tightly in her fist, her eyes swept around for signs of Myra, locked in her bedroom. Reluctantly, the maid drew out the treasure.
"I found this in the hallway . . . when she tried to escape."
"That's Sherrie's wedding ring!" Blood pounded in Jack's ears. Escape . . . ? Keep cool. . . keep cool! Anna squeezed back emotion. Fate works in miraculous ways, she thought thankfully. With Southworth delivering off his captive to Hunters and Myra nursing a black eye, fate had led her to open the door. She was ruminating on this, paying little heed to the distraught husband shaking her by the shoulders.
"Where is she?" he hissed, shaking Anna so hard her pug loosened and shimmering black hair tumbled about her shoulders. "Are you hearing me?"
"Yes, yes . . . " His strength clutching her shoulders overwhelmed her . . . the closeness of a man's body.
"Where is she?"
"She's been taken to Hunters Point Inn," mumbled Anna, still clutching the wedding band. "Where?"
Choking back emotion, she offered directions. When the door slammed behind him, Anna stood rubbing her shoulders, holding herself. Southworth would kill her for this treasonous act. This marked the end, she knew. Strange that one woman could change her life, perhaps end it. But the end of anything is a beginning of something fresh and, with that realization burst a glimmer of self esteem, something foreign to Anna since the day she'd been accused by her mother of sleeping with her stepfather. The drunken, moronic sort who'd laughed the day she packed her suitcase, and against her brother's advice, left home.
The desperation of being disowned by one's family hurt worse than Southworth's tortures. For a mother to damn her daughter, stain her soul with boundless guilt . . . and a brother to watch apathetically while she threw herself into a world she knew nothing about, was a kind of death in itself. By freeing Sherrie, she'd freed herself in a sense.