Page 3 of Wicked Things
“It’s…it’s the missing person’s report for Doctor Romera’s sister. It’s everything the police have on her disappearance.”
“You’re fucking kidding me, right?”
“Police reports are hard to come by, Mr. Mayfair. It took some serious work on my part to obtain that piece of paper.”
I can’t quite seem to make my brain engage. I can’t quite seem to tear my eyes away from the sheet of paper I’m holding in my hands. “Police reports areveryeasy to come by, Eli,” I say slowly. “Very easy. Any idiot can get a hold of a police report. Andthis…” I hold up the sheet of paper for him to see. “The information in this report was all supplied to the cops by Sloane and her family. “So…” I narrow my eyes at him. “You took her virginity, forced her to fuck a stranger, for information she already knows?”
A glimmer of amusement travels over Eli’s bloated, repulsive features. A tiny smile hovers at the corners of his mouth. “Come on, Zeth. You know this game as well as I do. You know how life works. Supply and demand. Survival of the fittest. The strong preying on the weak. It’s the way of the world. The natural order. I have bills to pay. Overheads. I saw an opportunity and I took it. You can’t fault me for that. And...and what do you care, anyway?” he rushes out. “You got to fuck a beautiful woman. A virgin. I didn’t even know she was a virgin. I would have charged double if I had.” He laughs shakily, winking at me, like I ought to be thanking my lucky stars that I got the deal of the century.
There are no words to describe what’s happening inside me as I contemplate his nervously amused expression. Great chasms of fire are renting open inside me. Night pours in, blackening my vision, clouding my mind. My ears roar, the sound of fury and deafening rage destroying my ability to hear the words that spew out of Eli’s mouth as he shrinks further and further back into his chair, away from me.
I’m no longer myself. I am something else. I’ve courted the darker side of my own soul for years now, gone toe to toe with it, played a dangerous game of control with it as and when I’ve need to, giving it more of myself than I should in times of anger. I have never,never, not once succumbed to it entirely.
Until now.
I wait. The room tilts and spins as everything sharpens, my focus constricting, my senses suddenly alive. The smell pouring from the discarded Chinese food cartons dotted around the office, quietly rotting, is raw and offensive to my nose, but the reek of Eli’s fear is enough to overpower the decay.
“What…what are you going to do?” Eli’s eyes shuttle toward the door, over my shoulder. He’s planning his escape route, wondering if he can get past me. I almost laugh out loud.
“What do you think I should do?” I reply.
“I think…I don’t know. I’ll refund you,” he says quickly. “Yes, I’ll give back your money.” Relief. He looks relieved, as if the promise of my returned money will clearly be enough to staunch the tide of my wrath. It’s what he understands, after all: greed. When I fail to give him the appeased look he’s oh-so-clearly expecting, a twisted realization settles on his face.
“And what about Sloane?” I ask. “What do you propose to return to her?”
“Look. You’re the one who fucked her,” Eli retorts. “You’re the one who…who did the deed. If you made it bad for her, then—”
“I’ll pay for my own sins when I show up at hell’s gates, you sick fuck,” I snap. “For now, let’s just worry about you andyoursins.”
His mouth opens and closes, gulping at the air like a fish. God knows what excuses he’s about to come up with. None of them will be sufficient. None of them will be enough to justify what he has done here.
The telephone on his desk begins to ring, shrill and loud, cutting the tense silence inside the office in two. Eli eyes me, then lurches forward, hand reaching for the receiver. I get there before him, placing my own hand on the phone. “Let it ring out. No more calls for you, my friend.”
“I’m still running a business,” he argues. “I have to…” His words die on his lips. He knows it’s pointless now. He must see it written all over me. The phone continues to ring. And ring. And ring. Eventually the answering machine kicks in. A cool, friendly, feminine voice fills the silence.
“This is the Eli Hofstadter Private Detective and Investigative Agency. I’m afraid no one is available to take your call right now. Please leave your name and number along with a short message after the beep, and we’ll be sure to get back to you as soon as we can.”
I think I jump as hard as Eli whenhervoice echoes out of the tinny speaker. Sloane. She sounds desperate. Torn. On the verge of tears. “Eli, this is Sloane Romera. I’ve been calling you for the past twenty-four hours. I really need to speak to you. It really is…vital. I did as I was asked. I went to the hotel. Everything went…smoothly.”
Bile rises from my stomach, burning at the back of my throat.
Smoothly. Everything went smoothly. Eli said something truly awful a moment ago. He said, “If you made it bad for her…”I didn’t make it bad. I made it as enjoyable as I could. I was careful. I was gentle. I would never have been so demanding of her if I’d known it was her first time…
Sloane pauses. It sounds like she’s trying to master her own emotions, to stay calm. “I really need the information you promised me, Eli. I have to go and get my sister. The police aren’t doing anything. She’s out there, all alone, and no one’s looking for her. Ihaveto find her.”
I glance down at the missing person’s report still sitting in my lap, and something cold and terrifying snakes through my veins. This is what he’s planning on giving her: absolutely nothing. Just more heartbreak and hurt.
I left my gun in the car down in the parking lot. I didn’t bring a weapon with me. I knew threats alone would be enough to convince Eli to give me what I wanted. Like I told him a moment ago, though, I’m a resourceful guy. I’m still holding the letter opener I used to bust open the filing cabinet. I turn it over in my hand, testing its weight.
Eli’s eyes go wide. “Please,” he whispers.
Pleaseisn’t going to cut it. Nothing will. My body is numb as I lunge across the desk, sinking the letter opener into his chest. The blade is dull; it takes an extraordinary amount of pressure to force the steel through the fat fucker’s shirt and into his body. The metal grinds against bone as it scrapes past his ribs.
The surprise on Eli’s face isn’t something I’ll be forgetting any time soon. He coughs, flecks of blood flying from his mouth. “Fuck…you…”he hisses, looking down at the point where my hand is thrusting the letter opener into his body. “Mother…fucker…”
“So, yeah. If you could please call me back when you get this message, Eli, I would be really grateful. I’m sure you can understand how…howworriedI am. Please. Imagine if it were your sister who’d been taken… I just… I need to find her.”
Sloane’s sadness must ring in Eli’s ears as he dies. It rings in mine as I withdraw the letter opener and I plunge it back into his body again, this time lower, into his swollen gut. Then again, in his chest, in his side, in his neck. He coughs and gasps as I stab him, his eyes wild with fear. I feel nothing. Over and over again, I drive the steel into his body, until the coughing and the gasping grinds to a halt.
