Pornography? That didn’t make any sense. You don’t kill for that. Not anymore. That stuff flooded the internet and it was free, well free for the most part anyway.
He saw a short stack of CDs on the soundboard, picked them up. Under the stack was a letter printed out on plain bond paper.
Mohammed,
I think you’ll find this one to your liking. She’s just turned forty, I think you’ll approve. She’s half off because of her age. A bargain and I think you’ll agree after seeing her in action that she still has several good years left.
It was unsigned.
“ Son of bitch,” Washington muttered. The bastard was selling people. He picked up the discs, read the labels. Julia M #1 through Julia M #7. “Oh, Mrs. Monday,” he said, feeling genuine pain, “your lover boy is about to ship you off to some guy named Mohammed.” Washington could just imagine what the rest of her life would be like.
He took out disc number three and stuffed it in his inside jacket pocket. Then he turned to get a closer look at the recording equipment and the Macintosh computers. Expensive. Professional. He raised the ax and brought it down on the soundboard. Not necessary, but it made him feel good. It only took him five minutes to demolish every piece of equipment in the room. After the equipment, he started hacking up the discs. Then he went next door and took care of the cameras. Normally he wasn’t so destructive, but Kohler was turning out to be the kind of man that he really didn’t like.
On the way out of the place, he took care of all the flat screen panels and on the walk back to his car he reached the inescapable conclusion that Monday was innocent. Walker had been right. Glenna was safe. He didn’t have to call the police in the morning. All he had to do was what Walker wanted. Prove Monday innocent. That would be easy, all he had to do was prove Kohler guilty. He would enjoy that.
He stopped, ears tuned to the night. There was a cricket chirping up ahead. It stopped. He heard an owl hoot, once, then it went quiet. The only sound was the wind rustling through the trees. Something was out there. He heard movement behind the brush on his left. Something was there. He saw a dog-like shape in the moonlight, heard a growl, then saw a pair of canine red eyes glaring at him from through the brush. He went for his gun and the animal disappeared, like a ghost dog. Somebody’s stray, he thought, big one. It put him on edge.
He put the gun away and continued his trek up the dark road toward his car. Twenty minutes later he was back at the motel. He rented a movie and a portable DVD player in the office and listened with feigned interest while a young man with an asthmatic cough tried to explain how to hook the player up to the television.
He was glad to be out of the cold. The walk back to the car had tired him more than he cared to admit. He resolved to get up early and take a brisk jog in the woods. From now on, he decided, he would jog every morning and get back in shape. He had made these promises to himself before and every time, without fail, he quit jogging within two or three weeks. But this time, he promised himself, he would stick it through.
He set the DVD player and the disc on the bed, then shucked off his shirt, shoes and the army pants. He didn’t know if the itchy, crawling sensations he felt all over his body were real or imaginary bugs. Either way, he needed a shower and clean clothes. The clothes he would get in the morning, the shower he would get right away.
He liked taking showers in motels. The hot water seemed to last forever. He luxuriated in the steam, letting the hot water pour over his head and down his back, soothing the cold away.
He did his best thinking in a hot shower. He thought about Jane. His marriage was over. He knew that. He didn’t know if he could find someone else, or even if he wanted to. He shivered, despite the steam, at the thought of being alone for the rest of his life. He shivered more at the thought of dating again. Some things were not meant to be, and Hugh Washington dating was just one of those things.
His thoughts wandered to Walker. Without Walker he was without work, unless he called Long Beach and ate humble pie. They would take him back, but he couldn’t do it. He wouldn’t be able to live with himself. He was too old, too set in his ways, and too much of a man to come sniveling back like a snot nosed brat. No, he told himself, you have to lie in the bed you make. He moved his head under the spray and watched the water run off his body, wishing his problems would follow it down the drain, but knowing they wouldn’t.
He turned off the shower, thinking about Monday. How would he react when he found out what kind of man Kohler was and what he had planned for his wife? He’d probably kill the son of a bitch, but he was probably going to kill him anyway, Washington thought, as he wrapped himself in a towel.
He left the bathroom and went to the bed, where he picked up and shook out the camouflaged clothes, trying to rid himself of any little creepy crawlies that might be left over from his stint in the woods. Satisfied, he folded them and stored them in the closet. Then he dropped the towel and put on his street clothes. He wanted to be ready to leave at a moment’s notice. After he was dressed he remembered that nobody knew where he was.
He drew the curtains, hooked the DVD player to the TV, popped in the disc and lay back on the bed to watch.
She stared out at him, from the screen, as striking as he’d remembered her. She was sitting on the edge of that king-sized bed. The one in the room with the cameras and the lights. She turned and looked over her shoulder at the camera and smiled. She thrust out her lower lip and blew the hair out of her eyes, the way he’d seen his daughter do countless times.
It looked like she was cold, the way she was shivering, and his heart went out to her. She turned away from the camera and stretched. The camera followed her shaking hand to the center of the bed, where it locked around her purse. A small leather handbag. She pulled the purse to herself, then opened it.
She withdrew a small mirror, then a tiny glass jar, a vial. She unscrewed the lid. His heart ached as she dumped the white powder onto the mirror, trying to hold it without shaking. She took a credit card out of the purse and started chopping up the small chunks of cocaine into a fine white powder. Finished, she used the card to build the powder into two lines, two inches long. It took a few minutes. She was methodical. He noticed her hands were no longer shaking as she rolled up a crisp hundred dollar bill.
She turned toward the camera, smiled a million dollar smile, winked, pursed her lips and threw a kiss. The camera moved in for a close up as she turned back toward the white powder. She put the bill to her nose, leaned over the cocaine and inhaled, making one of the small white snakes vanish. She repeated the motion with the other nostril, killing the other line.
She sat for a moment, eyes closed. She rolled her head and sighed. Then she turned toward the camera, cupped her breasts, squeezed, and sighed again. He had never seen anything like this. He wanted to take out the disc, but couldn’t. He was frozen, mesmerized. He had forgotten about why he was here, there was only him and the seventeen inch color screen. The rest of the world didn’t exist.
She scooted off the bed, stood and faced the camera. She had a little girl pout on her lips and she batted her eyes like a whore.
“ Get on with it,” the doctor ordered, his voice coming from off camera.
“ Play some music,” she said.
Washington was shocked, but couldn’t stop watching.
“ What do you want to hear?” another male voice out of camera range said.
“ Light My Fire. Play, Light My Fire.” In a few seconds the music of The Doors played in the background and she started to sway when Jim Morrison started to sing. The combination of the cocaine and music seemed to put her into a trance.