Page 32 of Body Count

Her grip loosened, and the cigarette drooped in her hand.

“Could you tell me about that?”

“That?That was months ago.”

“When?”

“April?March?March.He was on spring break.Butthat didn’t have—” She couldn’t bring herself to finish the sentence.

“What happened?”

A sheen of pink and purple light made her eyes look like glass.“He came up here.He was angry.I told him not to, but it was like—it was like it had been with Eddie, at the end, before Tip moved out.When they were both crazy, couldn’t keep their hands off each other.He was only here a couple of months, that guy.He doesn’t even work here anymore.He didn’t like Tip shouting at Marla.Marla said Tip got in his face, and it wouldn’t have been so bad if Tip had kept his mouth shut.”

“Tip came here,” I said.“He was angry.He got in an argument with Marla.And he fought with one of the staff.”

“It was—Marla said Brock had a temper.His name was Brock.He hit one of the girls, too.That’s why Marla got rid of him.”

“Why did Tip come here?”I asked.“What did he argue with Marla about?”

She was still speaking in that tone of disbelief, still in those fragments, like she was putting together pieces of a puzzle.“A party.Marla hires us out for parties sometimes.The guy liked to use his hands.Marla made him pay extra, and he was always good for it.But Tip came by when I was doing laundry, and he saw the bruises.”She seemed to remember me.Her eyes were liquid behind the lights.“We tell each other everything.”

It happens like that sometimes when you’re working a case.Someone says one thing, and it’s like a key turning in a lock.

“What was his name?”I asked.My heart was suddenly beating too fast.Mixed in with the smell of pancake syrup and fried foods and flushed bodies and baby oil now came a hint of something too sweet, something artificially floral.The pink and purple lights swiveled, and a wave of vertigo washed over me.“The guy who likes to hit.What was his name?”

She was holding the cigarette so tightly now that she was almost pinching it in half.“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.What was his name?”

“I don’t know!”But the fire went out of her in the next moment, and she slumped, the kimono sliding off one shoulder again.She caught it blindly, not looking at me.And then she said, “He told us to call him Sunny.”

13

Outside, I leaned up against one corrugated wall while I vaped.My stomach hurt, and the blue raspberry ice flavor of the vapor gave me a headache, and thenicotine only made me feel jittery as well as sour.

It was dark now, but even with the sun down, I sweated in the muggy summer night.The thud of the club’s music ran through the wall and into me, into my joints and bones.Cars and trucks sped along I-70, headlights slicing arcs out of the darkness, the sound of their tires steady and humming.The air displaced by their passage made the roadside weeds bend and whisper.A mosquito buzzed by my ear.Behind the club, the cleared ground ended at a wall of trees.Something moved back there once, breaking a branch, rustling leaves.And then the stillness settled again, andthe night was quiet and hot and deep.

Lola Wheeler had been rented out, for lack of a better word, to a man named Sunny.He’d hurt her.For fun.Tip had found out, and he’d come to the Beaver Trap and argued with Marla.The argument had ended with one of Marla’s staff, a guy named Brock, roughing up Tip and throwing him out of the club.And then, a few months later, Tip had gone to a party at Sunny’s lake house.And that’s where Tip had gotten hurt.He’d told me a bullshit story about a BDSM orgy, about a white-power dickhole, about everything.But the bottom line was that Tip had gone there, and he’d gotten hurt, and now he was gone.

It didn’t tell me anything.It didn’t answer any questions.Sometimes, detective work was like that—you pulled one thread, and when it seemed like you were finally getting somewhere, you ran into a snarl of a dozen other threads.

Had Tip known he was going to Sunny’s house?He must have; I wasn’t willing to believe it had been a coincidence.Had he gone to confront Sunny?To pay him back for the rough treatment his mother had received?That seemed like the most obvious explanation.But what had happened?If Sunny had been the one to hurt Tip, why hadn’t Tip told us?Why lie?And if he hadn’t—more questions.

And I still didn’t have an answer to the question that had brought me out here in the first place: where was Tip?Lola Wheeler hadn’t known her son was going to disappear.And when he hadn’t answered her call, when she’d left him a message, she’d sounded afraid more than anything else.It didn’t matter how many times she tried to convince me that Tip wouldn’t have gone anywhere or done anything without telling her; obviously Tipdiddo things without telling her.

I toyed with the idea that somehow the Beaver Trap was involved, but it seemed more like a connection than anything else: Tip and the Beaver Trap, the Beaver Trap and Sunny.I hit my vape again.The humidity soaked into my clothes and hair, and a few more mosquitos had joined their friend, buzzing around my head no matter how many times I waved them away.Time to start pulling another thread.

More headlights, grainy in the moisture-heavy air.The murmur of the roadside weeds.

My car was right there.And it was time to go home.

I took out my phone.Grindr, Scruff, Prowler.A rope bunny.A guy jerking off in a Batman costume.Some bozo who wanted to be my maid.Dicks on dicks on dicks.No faces.

I was still scrolling when a message came through from hung_daddy_9:hey

Every time, I thought.Or a dick pic.Orsup.Or a hole pic.How long could somebody do this before getting sick of it?Maybe next time, I’d start off with a joke.MaybeI’d write a fucking sonnet.

hung_daddy_9 was following the script.A dick pic came through a moment later, and the words:wanna ride

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