Dancer's Rain Read online

  DANCER’S RAIN

  Doug Sutherland

  DANCER’S RAIN

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  Copyright © 2013 by Doug Sutherland

  This book is a work of fiction, Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States by News-Cast.Com Inc.

  Edition

  1

  She pulled hard at the door handle, first hoping he wouldn’t notice and then not caring. The handle moved but the door didn’t—no give at all. She could feel his sidelong glance. He was aware of what she was trying to do but didn’t try to stop her. He didn’t have to.

  The truck was slowing down. Wherever this guy was taking her they were almost there. She snuck a look out the windshield but it was too dark to see anything except the forest crowding the sides of the dirt road. The truck stopped. Fuck it.

  She ran her tongue across her lips, eying him from under lowered eyelids, waiting for him to make eye contact. The Look. Give him the Look. When he fully turned to watch her she did the tongue thing again, doing it slowly and keeping her eyes on him.

  “Is that all you want?” she raised her legs a bit. Tight jeans, long legs. She knew the effect it would have. “You ever hear of just asking me for it? Maybe I want it too.”

  Her nonchalance surprised him and he broke eye contact, his eyes moving down her body. She wriggled a bit to make it look good, using the movement to bring her legs up a bit higher. She watched him, watched his breathing. Bastard’s eyes were eating her alive. She parted her lips, eyes on him. She reached for the top button on her shirt, making sure she moved slowly, undid the top button, moved to the next one. Corny, but guys were all the same. Especially the middle aged, crazy ones.

  Keep his eyes high and away from her legs, away from what she was going to do. Keep working on the buttons, move the folds of the shirt aside so this sonofabitch fucking animal could get a real good look. Damn pushup bra got her into this in the first place, now maybe it would get her out of it.

  She was scared but not terrified, not panic stricken. She’d been on her own now for months, and maybe she hadn’t seen it all by now but she’d seen a lot of it. So far none of it had been as bad as the stuff that had driven her away from home. She‘d had moves pulled on her by everyone from obnoxious looking teenagers even younger than she was to guys in their sixties. She’d been hit, threatened, screamed at, been reduced to tears, cried to, offered money, had money stolen from her, been offered a place to stay, been kicked out of places she was staying in—whatever. The last two she’d made the deal a few times, when it suited her. The first half dozen or so—well, there was the home thing again. Only once or twice in all the time she’d been running had she ever fucked anybody for the simple reason she wanted to. It hadn’t taken her very long to get it—get that she had something that these assholes wanted and not to give it away for nothing at all.

  And especially not to this guy. He stared at her, unblinking lizard eyes, and she kicked out hard. Once with her feet together, what she hoped was a blow hard enough to knock the wind from him, then bicycling her legs as fast as she could, pummeling him with rapidfire kicks.

  He just took it. He was big and she thought he looked soft—probably why she hadn’t been too worried about getting the ride in the first place, she’d just learned a lesson—but her kicking frenzy didn’t seem to have much of an impact—not until the heel of her sneaker connected with his chin. It wasn’t a solid hit but it made him mad and he suddenly lunged forward, looping an arm over her shins and pinning her legs against the back of the driver’s seat. He was heavy.

  They just stayed there like that for a long moment, her breath coming in gasps, long enough for her to realize that he had her, that he was in control.

  “Okay,” she said finally, “all right. I’ll fuck you. But when you’re done that’s it, all right? You just let me out of this damn truck and I’ll walk.”

  “Yeah,” he told her, “if that’s what you want.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him, thinking she’d just made some kind of deal. She pushed weakly against him, no strength in her legs moving them sideways like that, but enough to let him know she wanted him to move, give her some space.

  He leaned back, taking his weight off her, thinking that this was something new to him. By now there wasn’t a whole lot one or the other of them hadn’t tried, but this was new. She had a funny look on her face—not as scared as she should have been, maybe. He couldn’t place it, he didn’t have time, and he didn’t care anyway. But before he could move again something in her eyes went out and she just reached for the waist of her unbelted jeans and pulled down the zipper, then lifted those skinny hips and started pulling down her pants. Abruptly she stopped, a mocking smile on her face.

  “You want to do this or not?”

  He reached for her, not moving fast or suddenly this time, then pulled off her sneakers. She didn’t make any effort to resist. She was already working her jeans and panties down over her hips, all the fight gone, replaced by resignation and what he took to be contemptuous boredom. He didn’t like that.

  She was better looking than most of them, a tanned belly so flat it was almost concave, framed by the jutting blades of her hips. Her legs were long and tanned, marred only by a couple of telltale bruises on her thighs. She opened them wide and waited for him, an insolent smile playing at the edges of her lips—but he could see that she was shaking. So was he.

  He struggled with the damned condom, going as fast as he could before he lost his hard on. He hated it but he knew about DNA, what could happen. It hadn’t ever happened like this—she’d shown him something he hadn’t seen before. Usually it was a fight, which was what he needed to get excited and stay that way. He rammed himself into her very hard and then pistoned his hips as fast as he could, almost frantic now, trying to get the excitement back. He needed her to fight back, needed the fear, and he knew if he lost the erection the bitch would laugh at him. She just laid there against the door and took it, her face turned away, and that made him angry again.

  Something kicked off inside her and she just wanted it over with.

  “C’mon asshole, fuck me,” she hissed. She forced herself to groan, make it sound good. The guy weighed a ton but she tried to push her hips back up against him, make him come and make him go away.

  That helped him. He could feel his erection strengthening and he knew he was hurting her so he pumped harder. There were sounds coming from her now, and her hands clutched at the back of his head. One hand slid around toward his face but he batted it away, no scratches, then roughly pulled her breast free from the bra. He clasped his mouth over her nipple and sucked.

  She gave out a little scream, part anger, mostly pain. He finally realized that she was trying to rock herself back up against him and he pulled his mouth away from her breast and braced his right forearm against the passenger door, letting it take some of his weight. Suddenly her hips were slamming up into him, again and again. She did it so hard it was like she was trying to hurt him. That was new, too, and while he was wondering about it he lost contr
ol of that fine edge he was balanced on and blew everything, couldn’t stop himself, and then collapsed on top of her.

  She just stopped moving, went dead beneath him.

  “You’re heavy,” she said tonelessly. She was breathing hard but there was no passion or fear in it, nothing. His own heart was pounding, the pulses reverberating in his ears as he lay sprawled across her. She got her arms free and gave his shoulders a shove.

  “Come on, get out.”

  He could hear the contempt in her voice. He pulled himself out, twisting away from her so she couldn’t see how small he was now, but she wasn’t looking. She just started pulling her clothes on, her eyes down, like nothing had happened at all. He felt the familiar shame that always came to him at the end of something like this. Finally she looked directly at him, disgust in every part of her face.

  “You got what you wanted. Now drop me off somewhere.” She sounded...bored.

  He could fix that.

  2

  She was a pretty kid, blonde hair tossing in the sunlight, laughing with her friends. Cute. He shifted his position, leaning back against the scarred trunk of the old tree, letting the big plastic sack of bottles and cans rattle to the ground as he closed his eyes. He drifted away.

  The sudden jolt to his knee woke him up. He opened his eyes slowly and kept his hands still. He looked up. The cop looked down at him, swinging the nightstick up and over, into his palm. He looked young, maybe twenty-five, bulked up with gym muscles.

  “What are you doing here?”

  Billy looked up at the cop.

  “I’m resting. Must’ve fell asleep.”

  “Yeah? What were you doing before that?”

  “Filling up that bag. I got tired.”

  The cop leaned over and hefted the bag of empties. The bag was light and the cans rattled against each other. The cop just dropped it back on the ground. The top of the bag wasn’t tied and a couple of cans spilled out. The cop’s eyes flicked over in the direction of the school, then back at Billy.

  “You like watching kids?”

  “Yeah.”

  The cop looked at him, trying to decide if he was being a smartass. From his expression Billy knew he should say something else.

  “I spent all day tryin’ to fill up that bag. Since six this morning. I’m tired.”

  The cop still didn’t say anything, just looked at him hard. The look would have been a lot more effective with some miles behind it. People thought Billy was slow but he knew cops. This one was trying to decide what to do. He got to his feet, making sure he kept his movements slow. He knew better than to move suddenly or fast, and he didn’t want the cop to have an excuse to start whaling on him with his stick.

  “Can I have my bag back? There’s a lot of money in there.”

  The young cop misunderstood, his eyes going back to the bag and down, away from Billy. In spite of the rattling he’d heard he was thinking cash, or more likely drugs, the universal obsession of law enforcement. He leaned over, keeping an eye on Billy, and then quickly opened the mouth of the bag and looked inside. His lip curled at the sight of all the deposit cans and bottles. He used one hand to rummage at the bottom of the bag until he got Billy’s meaning and he understood. Billy realized, slowly, that the cop wasn’t much smarter than he was, just covered it better and used a uniform to hide the rest. Finally the cop let the bag go, Billy carefully and slowly reaching for it before anything else spilled out on the ground. He knew that he scared people, even cops.

  Frank pulled the big Ford pickup into his marked space in front of Strothwood’s Town Hall, looking up at the old brick structure that the council was now trying to pass off as somehow ‘historic’ in a bid to attract tourists. Good luck with that, he thought. He reached for the door handle and then stopped, quickly lowering his head as if consulting a clipboard or something. Too late—the old man had sidled up to his window and now just stood there expectantly.

  Frank stifled a sigh and reached for the door handle again. Jenkins gave way only enough to allow him to open the door. Frank got out slowly, careful not to touch him with the edge of the door. Ralph Jenkins—retired, way too much time on his hands—kept an accusing glare in place as Frank awkwardly shut the door behind him.

  “I want to talk to you about something.”

  “Yessir. What’s on your mind?”

  Frank was just under six feet or so but he slouched back against the cab of his pickup, careful not to tower over the man. Every time he saw Jenkins—and he saw him too much—it seemed like he’d shrunk.

  “I need to know what you’re going to do about that intersection.”

  “Which intersection is that, Mr. Jenkins?”

  “The one on the corner.”

  Frank stifled a smile.

  “They’re all on corners, sir—which one?”

  Jenkins flared.

  “Don’t be a smartass, boy. You know damn well which corner. The one near my house. I’ve had three accidents there in the last six months. The traffic is terrible. You need to change the intersection.”

  Frank did know damn well which corner. He’d written up one of the accidents himself—because he’d been on the receiving end. The damage was still writ large on the rear quarter of his pickup. Jenkins had sailed right through the stop sign and nailed him. Jenkins, like most of the men his age in town, still drove a big old American sedan, a Buick or something. Four doors, seat belts, sheet metal and a lot of mass. In spite of the impact—which was considerable—Jenkins had come away virtually unscathed other than a pretty good bump on the nose from where he’d hit the steering wheel. Frank had insisted on taking him to the tiny ER at the local hospital, Jenkins protesting and swearing every step of the way. Feisty old bastard had even tried to lodge a complaint, presumably because Frank was thoughtlessly occupying the same space Jenkins was trying to drive his car through.

  Frank assumed what he hoped was a neutral expression.

  “Mr. Jenkins, where are your glasses?”

  Jenkins actually started to pat himself down, looking for them, then stopped and looked warily at Frank.

  “What’s that got to do with it?”

  “Well, sir, I bet if you thought about those accidents you’d remember that you’d forgotten your glasses every time.”

  “So? Doesn’t change anything. It’s still a bad intersection.”

  This was going nowhere. But any police chief in his right mind—especially one in a small town with only a dozen officers—knows better than to blow off an ex-councilman, ex—leading citizen, no matter how far out of the loop he seems to be. Men like Jenkins knew everybody, knew where to dredge up the bodies—Frank looked at Jenkins again. Snowy white hair, hard lines creasing his face, glittering blue eyes. A man who’d had a big part in running this town once. Too smart to be reduced to this and way too connected to be dismissed out of hand. He felt a twinge of empathy. Twenty, thirty years from now maybe Frank would be buttonholing some poor bastard right here in this spot, giving him an education in how things were done back in the day. It was a dismal prospect. Like the card said, forty-two wasn’t the end of the world but you could sure as hell see it from there.

  “Mr. Jenkins, you of all people know how things work here. I can’t personally do anything about the intersection. All I can do is recommend. You know how tight the money is right now.”

  “Maybe we’d have more money if we weren’t paying our town employees so much.”

  “Yes sir. I figure it works out to around two dollars and seventy-five cents an hour.”

  Just in time he hung a weary smile on the end of the sentence, but Jenkins’ eyes flashed at the sarcasm. Watch it, Frank told himself. This old bastard still has fangs. He hurried to move on.

  “—but since you’ve taken the time to talk to me about it, I’ll definitely bring it up with Terry Wellner—he’s snowed under right now but I’ll be meeting with him this week.”

  Terry would be thrilled. Since the state money had dried up the man was t
aking creative accounting to a whole new level. Jenkins eyed him suspiciously, looking for another trace of the condescension Frank knew he’d pounce on. Frank gave him back a guileless stare. Jenkins couldn’t find any offence to take. Frank resisted the urge to glance at his watch and waited him out. Finally Jenkins nodded slowly.

  “I appreciate that, Chief. And you can tell Terry Wellner if he has any questions about this he can call me. I’ll be glad to show him what I’m talking about.”

  “I’ll do that, Mr. Jenkins.”

  The old man nodded again and turned back toward the sidewalk. Frank watched him, then headed inside.

  Sure as hell he ran into Wellner on the way. Frank held up his hands, palms out, and stopped.

  “I’d give it a minute if I were you,” Frank told him.

  Wellner, intent on picking up coffee and a donut, stopped in his tracks.

  “Huh?”

  “I just got cornered by Ralph Jenkins. The intersection thing.”

  Wellner knew that Jenkins, now that he’d descended on the downtown area, would be marauding the streets for most of the morning. Odds were they’d run into each other—the so-called Strothwood ‘downtown’ wasn’t very big, maybe two adjoining quadrangles, no buildings much higher than four or five storeys, most lower than that.

  “Shit.”

  It was nine am and already Wellner was sweating. He was a big man with a lot of extra pounds on him. The coffee and donut runs didn’t help.

  “What’d you tell him?”

  Frank gave him an evil grin.

  “I told him I’d be talking to you this week.”

  “What’d you do that for?”

  “You want him parked in your office? ‘Cause that’s probably where he was headed until he saw me.”

  Frank watched Wellner weighing the risk factors. Caffeine and sugar jolt vs twenty minutes mano a mano with Jenkins. The big man sighed and reluctantly turned around, then stopped to look hopefully at Frank.

  “You going for coffee later?”

  “I just got here. You’re on your own, bucko. Send Judy.”