Read The Collected Horrors of Tim Wellman for Free Online Page B

floor and
rubbed them out with her shoe. "So, she went with them?"
    I nodded. "Like they were bosom buddies," I
said.
    "She got a call right before she left," Karen
said. "She acted like it was nothing, but I could tell it spooked
her."
    "You remember the phone number in your
room?"
    "Yeah, 555-5654," she said.
    I picked up the phone on the desk and dialed,
not the hotel room number, but a friend I knew I could wrangle a
favor from. "Detective Johnson, please." I waited for the police
station switchboard to connect me. "Terrence? It's me. Listen, I
need a favor. Yeah, I know. By the way, how is that little whore
you got holed up out on Route 27? Ya need to invite me to her
eighteenth birthday party. I thought so. I need you to run down a
call for me. Yeah. Someone called 555-5654 about four or five hours
ago; I need to know who. Yeah, okay. Call me back... number here is
555-4327. Yeah." I hung up and looked at a few of the photos on the
walls. Not my type, really, too artsy. Naked women should be
photographed in direct light.
    "Hey, what's your angle on this, anyway?" she
said. She pointed to a photograph. "Needs a shave."
    I nodded. "I don't have an angle. Just an
innocent bystander who saw something that was never supposed to be
seen." I looked down at her, a good foot shorter than me. "I like
stories with neat and tidy endings."
    "That simple?"
    "Yep."
    "You fall in love with her?"
    The question cut me to the quick because I had
asked myself that same thing several times throughout the evening.
Why else would I give a shit about her or anything else. I could be
home drowning in a brandy snifter instead of going from one seedy
shithole to another, searching for something that, even if I found
it, wouldn't make the ending any better. "What if I did?"
    She shrugged. "Don't mean nothin' to me," she
said. "Everyone else she ever come in contact with did too."
    "Including you?" I said.
    She nodded. "Me more than anyone."
    The phone rang and broke the moment and I walked
across the room and answered it. "Yeah? Oh, okay. Yeah, I see." I
picked up a pencil and scribbled the address down on a piece of
paper. "Okay, thanks Terrence. Your secret is still safe with me,
pal. Yeah. See ya."
    She stood behind me and looked around my arm.
"That's Steve's address," she said. "I ain't never been there, but
I seen the address enough."
    "So, he called Susan," I said. I had another
piece of the puzzle to put in the bag but not enough to pour it out
on the table and start assembling it yet. But then help
arrived.
    The door burst open and a little guy with
slicked back hair and greasy face, but a too-expensive suit and
shoes, sauntered in. Karen jumped as if she had seen a ghost, then
ran over to him and grabbed his arms. "Steve! We been looking for
you!"
    He looked over at me, paused for a moment, and
then nodded. I nodded back. "A new boyfriend?" he said.
    "Steve," there's horrible news. Susan is..."
    "Susan is what?" Susan was not dead; she just
walked into the room.
    "Susan?!" Karen jumped off the floor with
excitement and then grabbed her up in her arms and swung her
around. "You were supposed..." She suddenly let go and turned and
pointed at me. "You liar!" She stomped over to me and took a swing
but I was able to duck out of the way. "You fuckin' liar!"
    "Hey, what's going on?" Steve said.
    "He said Susan was dead!" Karen yelled. "He
said... said he saw her jump off a building."
    "Is that so?" Steve said. I watched as Susan, or
whoever the woman was, walked past the desk and stood facing the
wall. I was beginning to lose my crush on her. She wasn't looking
at the pictures, I could tell. She simply seemed to be hiding her
face from me and Karen. Steve looked at me. "Did you see anything
else?"
    I nodded. "I saw the monster ." There was
no reason to lie, I had witnesses and I knew what I had seen. I had
touched her dead body.
    Steve nodded. "I see."
    "I wish you hadn't decided to butt in," Susan
said. She seemed to begin crying; I could see