A CROSS TO BARE
by
Stephen M. DeBock
All rights reserved
Copyright © January 2012, Stephen M. DeBock
Cover Art Copyright © 2012, Charlotte Holley
Gypsy Shadow Publishing
Lockhart, TX
www.gypsyshadow.com
Names, characters and incidents depicted in this book are products of the author’s imagination, or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of the author or the publisher.
No part of this book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, and email, without prior written permission from Gypsy Shadow Publishing.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
DEDICATION
For Robert and David Poyda, with thanks for the kickstart.
Connie Marx shivered as she stood alone in the moonlight. Spring weather was late in coming this year, and she longed for something warm to cover herself with; but of course that would defeat the purpose of her being here. She needed to display as much of herself as the law allowed, in order to consummate relationships beyond what the law allowed. Business had been slow tonight—make that nonexistent—and Connie needed business, now, in order to transact business of her own later. She wore a long-sleeved blouse to hide the telltale tracks in her arm, but the front of it was unbuttoned enough to show any interested party that she had nothing to hide beneath. Her skirt was hardly wider than the belt that hugged her hips, and her spiked heels made her look taller than her barely five-foot height.
The shadowed alleyway before which she stood gave Connie the creeps. But, she thought with a twist of her mouth, creeps were what she was after. She checked her make-up one more time in her compact mirror. The moonlight was dim enough to conceal the worst of the acne scars, and thick pancake hid the darkness around her eyes. Her lips were blood red, vivid and glossy.
She put the compact back inside her purse and looked around. Where was everybody? Oh, wait, it was Good Friday. Maybe her potential johns were in church, or dyeing Easter eggs with their families. Connie herself had a family, of sorts; in fact, she was carrying on the family trade. At twenty, she had grudgingly taken on the support of both herself and her besotted mother, who at this very moment probably lay in a pool of her own puke, a bottle of cheap vodka on the night stand alongside her stained and sagging mattress. What did Good Friday mean to Connie? She knew it was something about Jesus dying and coming back from the dead, but she’d never gone to Sunday School, never spent one hour inside a church.
Someone was approaching. Connie heard soft footfalls and looked up to see a man, in a dark overcoat, heading her way. The moon was behind him, which meant its light shone directly on her while he was in shadow. She reached into her purse and pulled out a cigarette.
“Excuse me,” she purred, “but would you have a light?”
The man stopped and looked down at her. “Sorry, I don’t smoke,” he said, but he didn’t make any move to continue walking.
Connie replaced the cigarette and smiled. “I’m going to quit,” she said. “Nasty habit anyway.”
“If you were really going to quit, you’d have thrown that thing away rather than putting it back.”
She looked up at the man, batted her eyes. “I am going to quit, I mean it.”
“Oh, I believe you.” He paused. “Tell me, what’s your name, and why are you out all alone this late at night?”
“My name’s Tiffany. What’s yours?”
“Call me John.”
She smiled. “John? Really?”
“Really, like you’re really Tiffany.”
“Got me. My real name’s Candy.”
“Candy. That’s sweet.”
If she got the pun, she gave no sign. “So, let me ask you the same question. What are you doing out all alone? This late at night?”
“I’m . . . looking for someone.”
“Could that someone be me?”
“That could very well be, yes.”
The man spread his coat and dug into his pants pocket. Connie stiffened, then relaxed as he brought out a money clip—not a badge, not a gun, not a knife. He wasn’t a bad looking guy, from what she could see, and his eyes seemed to capture the reflection of a distant street lamp as he glanced from side to side before peeling off some bills.
“This be enough?” he asked.
“For a quickie, right here in the alley.”
“That will be fine. I’m not looking for a long-term relationship.”
She laughed then, took his money, and led him into the alleyway.
“Well,” he said, “where do we begin?”
He was on Connie’s turf now, and her self-assurance took over. “No kissie-kissie stuff, okay? We cut right to the chase.”
“That’s fine with me. I wouldn’t want to smear the paint from those pretty lips. But I do intend to kiss you somewhere else. Would you like that?”
“Oh, honey,” she sighed. “You’ve got me wet already. Feel.” She hiked up her excuse for a skirt. She wasn’t wearing panties, and her wetness came from a light smear of petroleum jelly—a trick she’d learned from her mother.
The man felt, smiled, and Connie saw the glint of moonlight on his perfect teeth. Must’ve had braces as a kid, she thought idly as her body went on autopilot. She murmured, “Ooh, I like it when you touch me there.”
With one hand between her legs, the man slipped the other inside Connie’s blouse. She forced herself to breathe heavily, feigning passion, hoping to get him into her and out quickly. “Yes, oh yes,” she moaned.
The man ran his tongue inside her cleavage, and she felt his teeth brush against her flesh. Connie reached down and fumbled with his belt buckle. He said nothing; instead, both hands parted her blouse all the way and moved up to her armpits. She lost her grip on his buckle as he lifted her into the air and pinned her against the brick wall. They were eyeball-to-eyeball now, and she saw that his pupils were severely dilated. They looked almost vertical, too, like a cat’s. Or maybe a snake’s.
She felt him kiss her bare shoulder, slide his lips to the base of her neck, then travel north. He nibbled her earlobe. The breath from his nose filled her ear and made her shiver. Well, Connie thought, this guy seems to know something. I could almost get turned on, except—
“Honey, my feet can’t feel the ground, and this wall isn’t the most comfortable place to be—” she began as his lips traveled back to the side of her neck, lingered there, his mouth wide. Something’s not right, she thought as she felt teeth against her skin. Two of them, pressing against her neck, sharp as needles—and Connie knew the feel of needles.
“Hey!” she grunted. “That’s en—”
She never completed the word, because at that instant her larynx was torn from her throat. With her trachea severed, Connie began gurgling in her own blood. She tried to shake the man off, but there were no muscles left connected in her neck, and her head lolled back against the wall as if her spine were hinged. The man’s head dipped into her open throat, and the last memory she would carry to the other side was the sound of his feeding.
Soon the man lowered the girl—Candy, Tiffany, whatever—to the dirty pavement. From his topcoat he withdrew two four-liter collection bags with airtight closures. He slipped one over the girl’s neck and tilted her legs. After gravity had nearly filled the first bag, he sealed it and repeated the procedure with the other. When he was done, he placed the bags carefully inside his coat’s capacious pockets. Kneeling, he pulled the girl’s skirt down as if to preserve her modesty, crossed her hands over her chest, then adjusted her head to make it face upward. Her eyes were open, and he closed them delicately with his fingers. From another pocket he took out a rag and wiped the body clean of fingerprints. He stood again, looked down, and sighed with what might have been a trace of pity. He turned and walked to the end of the alleyway, looked from one side to the other along the deserted street, and disappeared into the night.
It was midnight on Good Friday, and Connie Marx lay in her makeshift tomb. Her body would not wait three days to be discovered; nor would it ever entertain any hope of resurrection.
#
Sitting at her desk in a corner of the newsroom, Lucille Easton read the story beneath her byline yet again. It was the lead, page one, banner headline: FULL MOON SLASHER CLAIMS THIRD VICTIM. She thought maybe the editor should’ve put an exclamation point at the end, but that was small potatoes. Her story had been printed virtually devoid of editorial alteration, which made her think she might have to retract her unspoken opinion that editors would happily revise the word of God.
It was a grim story. So why did she feel so giddy? Because I’ve graduated, she thought. From general assignment to investigative reporter, after only two years. All right, we’re not talking major metropolitan area here by a long shot, but that would come later. This job was just one rung on the ladder. And with these looks, could television news be trolling for someone like her this very minute?
Lucille had auburn hair, dark green eyes (thanks to contacts), and wide, full lips beneath an aquiline nose. She was tall and statuesque, borderline Rubenesque, the object of men’s stares—and some men’s fantasies—when she was out covering a story. Cops couldn’t be more accommodating, politicians couldn’t be more obsequious, and most men in the city room—virtually deserted today—couldn’t be more deferential.
Except for that greaseball Carmine, who plopped down in the chair next to her desk, uninvited, interrupting her reverie. His eyes fell to her scoop-necked blouse before rising to her face. Lucille’s expression turned to curdled cream. “What?” she asked, quickly slamming her desk drawer shut.
“And a glorious good Sunday to you too, Easton. Enjoying the holiday weekend, are we?” Carmine’s voice was as oily as the mousse in his black, combed-back hair. The guy always seemed to be at work. Then again, he had no family to go home to. The thought of Lucille’s having even that in common with the office lech didn’t sit well. And here he was, sitting next to her, scoping out her boobs.
“You obviously have something to say about my story.”
“You don’t believe I could be paying a social call?”
“Come on, Rosso, out with it. Share with me from your vast well of knowledge. Wait, make that half vast.”
“I love your subtle sarcasm, Easton.” His leer only deepened her frown. Carmine had joined the staff a couple of months ago from some big city paper, and he wrote well enough to make Lucille wonder sometimes, begrudgingly, why he was taking a demotion working in this small city newsroom. Then again, considering his constant stream of innuendos directed at female staff, maybe he’d been forced out of his other job for sexual harassment. In this paper’s down-home, non-PC environment, the women saw him more as an annoyance than a threat. Plus, if he’d actually tried to follow through on his remarks, newsroom gossip would’ve outed him in a heartbeat. And he would’ve been out on his ass.
Lucille glowered at him. “I’m being sarcastic because I know you’re about to pee on my parade.”
“Now, now, Easton, just trying to help. You know, the crime beat isn’t the same as covering board of education and small town committee meetings.”
She snickered. “Believe me, from what I’ve seen there isn’t that much difference.”
Carmine crossed his long legs and leaned back in the chair. “I would suggest, getting back to the reason for my visit, that you knock off the sensationalism in your stories. This isn’t the Enquirer, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“Come . . . on.”
He took the paper from her hand and quoted: “‘The ghostly glow of the full moon bathed the gruesome scene in lambent light.’ You’re supposed to be reporting, not doing a high school creative writing project.”
Lucille looked down at her lap, then back at Carmine’s half-lidded eyes. Bedroom eyes, he called them, to any woman who would listen. “So what would you suggest, Mr. Hemingway?”
“Just tell the story in nouns and verbs. Let the facts speak for themselves.”
“What’s wrong with adding some color?”
“Color’s fine—long as it’s not purple.”
The color she saw now wasn’t purple, but red. “Thank you for sharing.”
“Don’t ask my opinion if you don’t want it.”
“Um, Rosso, I don’t think I asked for it at all.”
“Not to change the subject, but did Billy really urp when he saw the vic?” Billy was the recently-hired photographer, the kid on call this holiday weekend.
“He did, after he sneaked up close enough for a shot. The detective, that would be Stan Lasiewicki, naturally, made him delete the photo on the spot and threatened life and limb if he ever ignored his no-pictures order again.”
“So Billy contaminated the crime scene, right? Smooth move.”
“Laz was severely pissed.”
Carmine sniffed, glanced at her desk drawer, and shook his head. “Still committing suicide in slo-mo, are we?”
Lucille frowned, then got it. “Listen, Carmine, everyone needs one little vice at least.”
He raised and lowered his eyebrows, Groucho style. “If you want a vice, I’ve got a better one for you. And it won’t make you smell like a burned-out campfire, either.” He tilted his head toward the ceiling, as if considering. “Then again, the friction might—”
“You’re a pig.”
“Oink, oink.”
“Goodbye, Rosso.”
He stood and glanced down as Lucille opened her drawer and made sure that her cigarette butt wasn’t still smoldering. He walked two steps, stopped, and looked over his shoulder. “Oh, Easton?”
“What?”
“Happy Easter.”