‘I want you to find out, Julie! You’re a detective. At least, a police officer, I mean. You’re skilled at this kind of thing.’
Julie opened her mouth to try to dissuade the man, but he kept on talking, letting it all out. ‘She’s always so tired afterwards, sore, and so quiet and subdued. It’s like she’s a completely different person, for a day or two. She’s so nice to me then that–that I can’t come out and ask her. But you can find out for sure – find the evidence of what she’s up to.’
Julie steeled herself for the next question, which had to be asked. She’d been dragged in this far, she might as well go all the way. ‘Do you two still have sex, Vincent?’
The man gulped. ‘Not for a few days after she’s … been out. But afterwards, yes, in the dark, in our usual …’
Julie smiled. ‘You can tell me, Vincent. Friend to friend.’ She was about to add, ‘Victim to law officer’, but bit her tongue in time.
Vincent flushed, then shrugged. ‘Well, uh, we do our usual thing – missionary position, I, uh, guess they call it. Cassie used to try to get me to experiment with other positions, but now she seems content with just that … every now and then.’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Follow her, Julie. Find out what’s going on. I have to know!’
Julie squeezed Vincent’s hand. She’d never seen her friend so passionate about anything before, and she knew, as a friend, she had to help. ‘OK, Vincent, if that’s what you really want. I’m working day shifts this week, so I’ll stake out your house at night, find out what I can. But you’re probably not going to like what I find out.’
Some relief showed in Vincent’s eyes, and he smiled weakly. ‘Thanks, Julie. I have to know. Maybe I can still do something – to save our marriage.’
* * *
Julie parked three houses down from Vincent and Cassie’s modest bungalow that night, pulling up around eleven o’clock. Her black sedan with the tinted windows was inconspicuous, just another car in line on the quiet street. Most of the houses, including the one at 315, were already darkened. Julie sipped a cup of cold coffee, played Minesweeper on her mobile phone.
At 12.21, the front door of the bungalow opened. Someone slipped out into the shadows. Low-hanging clouds covered the moon, but in the dim light shed by the widely-spaced streetlights Julie’s trained eye could see that the person was wearing a headscarf and trenchcoat, and clutching a purse. And in the stillness of the night, she could hear the white high heels click-clacking hurriedly down the sidewalk, running away from the home, white-stockinged legs flashing in the yellow light. The front and back of the shapeless trenchcoat were packed tight with hot-blooded woman.
There was a cab waiting at the cross street up at the four-way stop. Julie watched the woman open the rear door of the cab and jump inside. Then she turned over the key, set her own car to purring and eased out of the parking spot to tail the cab and the woman inside.
Julie had experience, and training, in following suspect vehicles, and she used it now, keeping her distance but keeping the taxicab in sight. The traffic was light at that late hour on a weekday. Until they crossed Main Street and headed down to the docks. Then there was no traffic at all. Julie had to douse her lights, knowing it was illegal and not caring. She was as curious as Vincent now about what was going on.
The cab turned right at the river and travelled along Front Street, past the docks, the warehouse district, to the barren, desolate waterfront well up the river. Julie saw it swerve left, bump along a short dirt road, then come to a stop. The taxicab’s headlights illuminated an isolated, dilapidated shack perched on the edge of the weed-strewn riverbank, and Julie frowned in concern.
The woman got out of the cab, ran to the door of the shack, pulled it open and slipped inside. Light glowed in the one window on the side of the shack, as the cab pulled out and drove back up Front Street. Past Julie in her darkened car.
She drove down the street and turned into the dirt road and parked. She opened the car door and got out, softly closed the door and jammed her gun into the waistband of her jeans at the back. Her sneakers made no noise as she crept along the rutted path up to the shack. She didn’t like the set-up at all. Liked it even less when she heard a loud crack, then a scream.
The shrill cry came from a woman. The violent crack sounded like flesh impacting flesh. Julie leaped forward and pressed herself up against the weathered plank wall of the shack, next to the grimy window. There was another crack, another scream. Julie ducked down under the window, then rose. She peered through the cracked glass, and her eyes widened with shock.
Cassie was pushed up against the far wall of the shack, naked except for her high heels and stockings, her hands splayed out on the wall, body arched at the waist, bum thrust back. A large, powerfully built man dressed entirely in black leather had hold of her golden-blonde hair with one hand and was smacking Cassie’s round, ripe bottom with his other huge hand. He cracked his hardened palm across her outthrust rump, making her scream, jump. Rhythmically, brutally, over and over, hand marks flashing white on the rippling, reddened flesh of Cassie’s vulnerable bum.
Julie raced around to the front of the shack and kicked the door open, barked, ‘Freeze, asshole!’ Her gun up and levelled at the giant.
He twisted his bald head around and glared at her. Cassie jerked her head around and stared at Julie.
There was shock in Cassie’s glazed, amber eyes, contempt in the man’s steel-grey ones. A sneer curled his full, red lips, the gold earring in his left ear glinting in the light shed by the one overhead bulb hanging from the tarpaper ceiling. He raised his right hand up into the air again, looked at it, at Julie’s raised weapon. He slammed his hand down across Cassie’s singed buttocks, shivering her ass, shaking the woman and the wall she was clinging to.
Julie’s finger tightened on the trigger.
Cassie screamed, ‘No, Julie! I want it! I want Tony to spank me!’
Julie gulped, the gun shaking in front of her. Her eyes focused on Cassie’s blushing rump, the full buttocks glowing with heat, and she noticed the streaks of wetness on Cassie’s inner thighs, running down the woman’s trembling legs.
‘Yeah, she fucking wants it – bad!’ Tony growled. He jerked Cassie’s head back, crashed his hand down against her butt cheeks, rocking her hard. ‘Bad enough to pay for it.’
Julie looked at the scowling man. Her eyes travelled down his broad shoulders and barrel chest and flat stomach, to the bulge in the front of the man’s leather pants – a large bulge that seemed to throb and grow right before Julie’s eyes, threatening to split the man’s pants wide open. She slowly lowered her gun, tucked it back into the waistband of her jeans on the third attempt. ‘Wh–what’s going on?’ Her voice was dry and cracked.
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