Right now, though, it’s Friday, around midnight, and I’m lying naked under the sheets with Ms. Naomi Tarrant close by. She is sleeping, purring in long deep breaths, dead to the world. Our second session began around ten, after pizza and beer, and though it lasted for less than half an hour it was nonetheless thrilling and utterly exhausting. We both admit that we’ve been a bit on the inactive side, and we’re having a grand time catching up. I have no idea where this nascent relationship might be headed, and I’m always overcautious—a result no doubt of the permanent damage inflicted by Judith—but as of right now I adore this girl and would like to see her as often as possible, naked or otherwise.
I wish I could sleep like that. She’s in a coma and I’m lying here wide awake, not aroused—that would be normal—but thinking of so many things other than sex. The trial Monday; Swanger and his tale about the Kemp girl; the bloody bodies of Tubby and Razor, rolled up in old cheap carpet and dumped in the landfill, probably by Miguel Zapate and his gang of drug dealers. I think of Detective Reardon and almost shudder at the idea that he and others in the police department suspect, either slightly or strongly, that I had something to do with the murders of Link’s thugs. I wonder if Link has decided to leave me alone, now that I can snap my fingers and get people whacked.
So many thoughts, so many problems. I’m tempted to ease out of bed and go find some booze, then I remember that Naomi doesn’t keep the stuff in her apartment. She’s a light drinker and a healthy eater, and she does yoga four days a week to keep things superbly toned. I don’t want to wake her, so I lie still and stare at her back, at the smooth perfect skin that rises and falls over her shoulder blades and lifts again to form the cutest bottom I’ve ever seen. She’s thirty-three years old, recently divorced from a creep she wasted seven years with, childless and seemingly unconcerned by it. She doesn’t talk much about her past but I know she has suffered greatly. Her first love was her college boyfriend who was killed by a drunk driver a month before their wedding date. With moist eyes, she told me she could never love another man that much.
I’m not really looking for love.
I cannot shake the thoughts of Jiliana Kemp. She is or was a beautiful girl, like my companion here, and there is a good chance that she is alive and living a life that is indescribable. Arch Swanger is a psychopath, and probably a sociopath, and he would rather lie than tell the truth about anything. But he wasn’t lying about young Heather Farris, late of the village of Lamont, Missouri, a twenty-year-old dropout who was working the graveyard shift at a convenience store when she vanished with no clues. They’re still combing the woods and bringing in bloodhounds and offering rewards but nothing has worked so far. How did Swanger know about her? It’s possible he caught an early news report, but that’s not likely. I went online immediately, found her story, and began following it in the Columbia newspaper. Lamont is over five hundred miles away from here, and, sadly, she’s just another missing girl from a small town. Heather has not made the national news.
What if Swanger is telling the truth? That Jiliana Kemp and Heather Farris are two girls out of a dozen who’ve been kidnapped by a sex-trafficking ring and forced to strip, screw, and breed while they live on heroin? The fact that I know this, or at least suspect it, makes me feel like an accomplice. I am not Swanger’s lawyer and I made that very clear. Indeed, I felt a real rush of adrenaline when I gripped my Glock and thought about putting him out of his misery. There are no ethical constraints binding me to silence and confidentiality with this scumbag. And even if there were, I would be inclined to ignore them if doing so might save some girls.
I stopped worrying about ethics a long time ago. In my world, my enemies are ruthless. If I make nice, I get crushed.
It is now 1:00 a.m. and I’m even wider awake. Naomi rolls over and flings a leg in my direction. I gently stroke her thigh—how can flesh be so smooth—and she whimpers as if somewhere in her deep sleep she likes the touching. I manage to get still and close my eyes.
My last thought is of Jiliana Kemp, living in our generation’s version of slavery.
