Lover Man: An Artie Deemer Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page B

exclusively, no smiling vacations, no puppies (not even Jellyroll), no sunsets or sailboats. She published a slim volume of horrific faces so stark and real, so diseased, one could feel the wet pus in their untended sores. Staunchly, admirably, noncommercial, that was my insightful view. I never said, "Look here, lover, why not a cuddly puppy on a sailboat in the fucking sunset every once in a while? You know, just for fun." I wonder if Billie resented my blindness.
    The lock had been drilled out. I fumbled with her key in the dim light before I recognized that there was a hole the size of my thumb where the cylinder should have been. I pushed the door open. The light was still on.
    The room had been ransacked, as if something had picked it up, given it a violent rattle, and put it back down. Photographs and contact sheets covered the floor ankle-deep. Stubbly, grimy, and damaged faces stared up at me without hope. All the photos on the wall, Billie's favorites, had been twisted from their frames and demolished. Two tall filing cabinets lay on their sides, empty. Stripped of drawers, Billie's desk had been flipped on its back. The darkroom door hung ajar. I looked in. Ransacked. Plastic developing trays, chemical bottles, drying racks, and all the other arcane apparatus hurled about. Even her enlarger had been torn apart.
    I knelt down in front of Billie's little half refrigerator and opened the door. It was full of clothes. What an unusual place to store your laundry, in a refrigerator. Gradually, dimly I understood. There were clothes in there, all right, but not laundry.
    A very dead man all curled up was wearing those clothes. Somebody must have levered him in with crowbars. You couldn't have fit a box of Arm & Hammer in there with him. His knees were drawn up tight under his chin, and his back and neck were bent in a way no living man could stand. His forehead was pressed hard against the freezer section, a little box mounted in the upper corner. That forehead, I only saw it for an instant, but I'll never forget that forehead frozen blue-black and frosted all the way down over his eyebrows. Where the black skin ended, a band of fire red began as if all the blood in his dead body had been somehow sucked by the cold into his face. Even the whites of his eyes were flaming red, like demon eyes in a slasher movie.
    I ran in mindless terror. I slipped and skated over the downtrodden and, out of control, slammed into the door headfirst. I managed to get my hands up fast enough to protect my face but not my glasses. They struck the door a blow that bent them flat and bruised the bridge of my nose. Once out, I sprinted for the stairs.
    When you don't do much besides listen to bop, you tend not to experience mortal terror. I had no idea what it does to the muscles. They get a squirt of juice that causes them to contract out of control. I could have run right up the wall, but I didn't. Instead, I stopped dead at the top of the stairs. I had heard a noise. Footsteps. The tap-tapping of hard heels. From where? Coming up the stairs, heading my way. I stood panting, waiting for rational thought to catch up. I dove through the men's room door. The footsteps reached the top of the stairs, then grew louder still. Right outside! I leaped into a stall and latched the door.
    He entered the restroom after me. I sat on the seat so my feet would be positioned convincingly. Think! What would I do if hetore the door off the stall? Kick him in the nuts? He ran water in the sink. Probably to cover the sound of my murder. I peeped cautiously under the stall.
    What? Red stockings? Thin, shapely ankles and high-heels? She washed her hands, dried them on a paper towel, and walked out, heels tap-tapping, fading to silence. I unlatched and pushed open the door of the stall. For a quarter, I noticed, I could get reliable feminine protection from a vending machine on the wall.
    I sat there for a long time, trembling. The right earpiece of my glasses stuck